Yes, The NDC Government Must “FIX” Our “Broken" Economy

Perhaps four years hence, some of the members of the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will look back and thank the defeated presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the December 2008 election, Nana Akufo-Addo, profusely, for the wake-up call, which his latest comments on the government’s performance, thus far, represents.

The Mills administration must not forget that it was elected into office to improve the quality of life of all Ghanaians – and to ensure that those members of the previous administration who took our country for such a huge ride, are tried and jailed, for abusing the trust of Ghanaians.

Nana Akufo-Addo is absolutely right in asking the government to “fix” the economy if he thinks it is “broken.” That is precisely what Ghanaians expect – and the Mills administration must step out of the shadow of conventional economic thinking if it is to succeed in “fixing” Ghana’s “broken economy.”

 Above all, they must not allow themselves to be distracted by the Gordon Browns and the Barrack Obamas of this world – who are only keen to ensure that ultimately UK and US investors in our telecoms, gold, oil and natural gas industries don’t lose out to the Chinese.

The trip to the UK at Gordon Brown’s invitation was an unnecessary distraction – the president of a bankrupt Ghana ought to stay at home and see to the revival of our nation’s ailing economy: not gallivant around the globe like his predecessor used to.

Let him stay in the Osu Castle and concentrate on planning projects to the tune of some 20 billion dollars – which we can implement in joint-ventures with the best-resourced of the Chinese state-owned enterprises: and finance with sovereign bonds we can issue to China in exchange for her funding those projects.

The NDC must not forget that the four years that President Mills was elected to rule our country for, will pass very quickly. It is therefore important that the government takes bold decisions to help resolve our nation’s problems. They must aim to create Africa’s equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia in our country, as quickly as it is possible to do so.

 If they allow their thinking to be dominated by the same old “chew-and-pour” economic theories that have failed us so woefully in the past, they will wake up to discover, in 2012, that Ghanaians have become disenchanted with them – and want regime-change.

The pointless arguments about inflation, the depreciation of the cedi and the total value of foreign direct investment that the NPP and NDC have attracted into Ghana, betrays a certain poverty of thought amongst our political class. Ghana is not alone in that regard – nations across the globe from Iceland through Hungary to Kenya are all in the same boat. It is called the global recession and credit crunch, is it not?

Why don’t our politicians take a cue from the capitalist nations of the West – who tossed the old rules aside when their economies were melting down: and pumped trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money into private entities to save their economies from collapsing?

Instead of wasting time waiting for foreign direct investment that will never come in sufficient quantities to make any real difference to society’s living standards, why don’t our leaders help the zillions of Ghanaians imbued with the entrepreneurial spirit, who could create millions of jobs in our country, if they had access to loans from banks at rates of interest that aren’t usurious?

If our leaders had the imagination to prevail on the Bank of Ghana to bring interest rates down to less than three per cent, for example, from the initiative-killing rates of over 25 per cent currently prevailing in our country, will that not quickly help create an enterprise culture in our country, and see an explosion in the number of well-off individuals with the ability to employ their fellow citizens?

Why, for example, does the Mills administration not think of putting money directly into the pockets of working Ghanaians – by the simple expedient of removing the burden of personal income tax that working Ghanaians currently shoulder: by abolishing it?

By also lowering the corporate tax rate to the point where it is the lowest anywhere in the world, will that not make companies with investments in Africa make this their regional headquarters, as well as help bring down some of the cost of doing business in our country, somewhat, in addition to helping businesses in our country to become more profitable undertakings?

Paradoxically, lowering corporate tax, granting an amnesty to tax-evaders (who agree to pay up all their tax arrears over an agreed time-frame!), and passing a law making tax evasion a crime punishable by a mandatory prison sentence, will, far from reducing tax revenues, rather increase them dramatically.

The government can increase revenues yet further, by checking the veracity of the often-bogus claims of some of those who evade duties payable on the perfectly-okay vehicles they import into Ghana, and falsely describe as “accident-vehicles” to the Customs authorities – if they get the police and insurance companies in the countries such vehicles are imported from, to confirm that the chassis and engine numbers match those on their data-base of salvaged accident vehicles.

To protect revenue, all importers who make false declarations about the type and value of goods they import, must be made to forfeit those goods. Above all, the Mills administration must not venture down the same path that the self-seekers in the previous regime trod.

They must never allow the national interest to be sacrificed for the self-interest of any hypocrites lurking in their regime – who desire to send their personal net-worth into the stratosphere, by stealth. A transparent and open administration whose members and their spouses publicly publish their assets, prior to and after their tenure, is a sine qua non for a two-term Mills presidency.

The Mills administration must know that many companies on the make (such as the Yuhuda security companies of this world!), are standing by ready to collaborate with any wolves in sheep’s clothing in the government, to fleece our country, when the opportunity to do so presents itself.

If those hypocrites succeed, their regime will definitely fail to “fix” Ghana’s ”broken economy” and will be turfed out of power by the same independent-minded “floating-voters” whose crucial votes helped get them elected into office in December 2008.

Political parties can take the millions of “My-party-my-tribe-right-or-wrong” myrmidon-types whose blind support eventually destroys political parties when they win power, for granted, but they must understand that it is not those individuals (who wear blinkers permanently and are too blind to see what goes on in our country, and too thick to think for themselves!), who decide who rules our country on election-day.

The real king-makers, Ghana’s discerning and independent-minded “floating-voters,” are watching and rating their performance, on a daily basis.