The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) would present Ghana's next vision of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government to the President next week.
The vision document, which sought to achieve a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita income of 1000 US dollars by 2010, has laid down the foundational strategies for accelerated growth.
The 1992 constitution requires every new government to present a coordinated programme of economic and social development policies within the first two years in office to parliament.
This means that the current government has only 26 days for this exercise. Dr. Paa Kwesi Ndoum, Chairman of the NDPC made this known on Wednesday at a day's workshop for registered political parties in the country as part of the national consensus building process to fashion out the vision.
Representatives of all political parties with the exception of the United Ghana Movement (UGM) and the National Reform Party (NRP) attended the workshop, which began with a video clip on the regional consultations for their inputs into the vision.
Dr Ndoum gave an overview of the drafted document and said the thrust was to see it as a task for all and not just for the government in power. He said analysis of previous development plans have indicated that Ghana missed all the important targets because of lack of linkage between the plan and the budget put in place for their implementation.
Besides, he said, there was lack of funding to implement the plans vis-?-vis the huge consistent debt burden of the country which constraints the good intention of the visions. Dr Ndoum explained that what government has done was a critical study of all the development plans from 1951 to the present Vision 2020 from which it has taken the good parts.
"We cannot come out with a different vision because almost all have a common objective of bringing prosperity to the nations, hence a revised version of past plans is what we have produced with specific targets," he added.
Dr. Ndoum who is also the Minister of Economic Planning and Regional Integration said Ghana needed a vision that would be enduring to afford the opportunity for implementation.
Dr. Baffuor Agyeman-Duah, Executive Secretary of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) who chaired the workshop commended the representatives of the political parties for the demonstration of a national consensus in the process.
He said building a national consensus was very crucial for our development objective efforts saying "what is needed is to put all party affiliations aside and contribute dispassionately to the vision being pursued for the good of all."
"The new vision is not substantially different from that of the previous government, besides let us know that in the sub region Ghana seems to be agreeing much more on the essentials of democratic principles." He noted.
