Head of Finance Department of the School of Business, University of Cape Coast, Prof. John Gatsi, has vehemently disagreed with Ghana’s industrial growth rate as mentioned by President Akufo Addo in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
The President submitted that the Ghanaian Industry has been revived from a rate of 0.5% in 2016 to 17.7% in 2017.
The very vocal Professor described such figures as misleading; explaining that anytime industry sector growth is mentioned it seems to people as if it is manufacturing.
Speaking in an interview with Kaakyire Ofori Ayim on Atinka FM’s “Simpieso”, Prof. Gatsi pointed out that the oil and gas and mining sectors are part of the industry and the entire growth led by these sectors.
“So if we take away the mining, oil and gas sector, what is the growth we are talking about in the industry”, he added.
According to him, for a very long time the sector has not help us in our efforts to create jobs and raise revenue hence we need to have all-inclusive growth where agriculture and other sectors contributions are sizeable.
“If we don’t do all-inclusive growth and we continue to fall on oil and gas and minerals then it means we are not doing anything different….and that the statistics points out vividly”, he said.
He however called for calculated efforts to attain a sizeable growth in agriculture and as well help develop the skill of young people for production and creativity to enhance economic development.
Also on job creations, he queried the 100,000 created for youth with the Nation Builders Corps this year is a continuous mechanism of absorbing people from time to time in the fields of health, education and the police service.
Rather, we need implementable programmes to create jobs as well as roadmap to deal with the unemployment since it is increasingly becoming a security issue.
Prof. John Gatsi added that the 745000 jobs create by government is disputed and that indeed if such persons are employed for the Planting for Food and Jobs, the impact would have been heavily felt.
Interestingly, in reality these jobs are conspicuously missing.
Ghana |Atinkaonline.com |Patrick Ofoe Nudzi