AT its first shadow cabinet presentation on the economy, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) has made it clear that it would re-design agreements for the exploration of natural resources, especially gold, oil and gas.
The purpose, according to the party, is to ensure that Ghanaian entrepreneurs, investors, professionals and workers become the main players and the people of Ghana the main beneficiaries.
CPP’s Shadow Member for Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, who stated this in Accra yesterday, explained that the current situation where mining companies gave peanuts to the country in terms of taxes and royalties, and left their areas of operations undeveloped and devastated needed to stop.
He reiterated the party’s position that if the extraction of any natural resources would not benefit the people of Ghana, then they must be allowed to remain in the belly of the earth, adding that all these were under the CPP’s broad objective to “bring the economy back home”.
He said the impact of the CPP economic policy would be felt by all Ghanaians and the objective would be different from those that had been offered by both the NPP and the NDC administrations.
Dr Nduom, who was the party’s 2008 presidential candidate, said the CPP would take an aggressive posture to wean the economy from the IMF, the World Bank and other international financial institutions.
He said his party would “not mortgage the future of our children and our natural resources to our detriment and for the benefit of other nations as we believe the SXT Korea agreement and existing oil and gas agreements will do”.
He noted that a CPP government would mandate the use of the purchasing power of the state to ensure that Ghana maximised the potential of local industries such as agriculture, technology, and manufacture of consumer goods as a means of enabling local producers to find their feet in the market.
“Where the private sector is unable or unwilling to supply capital in an area of strategic importance to our nation, public funds will be provided to finance new industries independently or in partnership with the private sector,” he added.
He said with firm signals of uncertainty and lack of confidence, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, the Minister of Finance, introduced the 2010 budget to Parliament in a way that told Ghanaians that “the road to achieving the ‘Better Ghana’ agenda has many curves, potholes and roadblocks”.
Dr Nduom said the NDC budget aimed at reducing the estimated budget deficit of 14.5 per cent of GDP in 2008 to 9.4 per cent of GDP at the end of 2009 through economic stabilisation and fiscal control.
He said this was an indication that the NDC preferred to improve numbers by playing the statistics game, but the CPP would improve human condition through investment in what would provide opportunity for better life such as social welfare, conducive, healthy environment, and good education based on science and technology.
He expressed worry at the manner in which the Mills Administration had led the country back into the iron-clad grips of IMF and World Bank and their growth-suffocating conditions, which we have not been able to meet, resulting in the slow-down of the disbursement.
“Also worrisome is the fact that the Economic Governance and Poverty Reduction Credit from the World Bank was designed to ... serve as a partial bridge to the onset of oil production. This can only mean that we have started to spend oil revenues even when as a country, we have not agreed on the use of petrol dollars,” Dr Nduom, who also served as Energy Minister in the Kufuor Administration, added.
He said the 2010 budget continued the policy of achieving macroeconomic stability and fiscal consolidation at the expense of real growth that would encourage job creation and a rise in the standard of living of Ghanaians. He added that the 2010 budget did not also have the policy intentions that would make it possible for Ghanaian companies to gain easier access to credit, obtain lower cost funds and create more jobs in the country.
He said given the prospects that the Mills Administration missed out on the 2009 GDP growth target of 5.9 per cent for an actual of about 4.7 per cent, it was difficult to determine how Ghana would reach a growth target of six per cent in 2010.
Dr Nduom said without this growth, the dream of becoming a middle income country would not be achieved during the four-year tenure of the Mills-led Administration.
He explained that managing the economy by relying on inflation targeting and slowing government expenditure while liberalising trade would not get the country there.
He said the vision for Ghana in one generation was a status of a high income country, a society that is just, safe, caring, united and prosperous.
Dr Nduom said to achieve this would require social transformation that would turn the country into a patriotic, disciplined, self-reliant society, one that pursues excellence.