Nduom dares Botchwey

Ghana’s Minister for Economic Planning and Regional Integration, Dr. Kwesi Nduom has dared former Finance Minister and NDC’s presidential hopeful, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey to open debate on the proposed national vision.

“First of all, I wish to invite Dr. Botchwey to come back to engage me and others at the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) in an informed discussion on what is happening as far as preparation for the new national vision is concerned”, Dr. Nduom said.

At a session last week, on the proposed national vision, the Minister hinted that government intends to build a society of “free individuals based on excellence in order to reach a per capita income of $1000 by the year 2010.

Dr. Botchwey however dismissed the projected $1000 per capita income on an Accra radio station, JOY FM saying, “the proposal was overly ambitious”.

Dr. Botchwey’s reasoning was based on the West African country’s inability to attract significant investments and lack of stable macroeconomic environment.

“If a $1000 is too ambitious, then I am worried”, Dr. Nduom told “The Independent” adding he expected people like him to offer suggestions that could give us significant goals so that we can put in more effort”.

According to the minister, the planning effort of the national vision was a broad-based national effort that embraces people from all walks of life including politicians from all political parties (including the NDC).

“As a Ghanaian, he is welcome to provide input and make whatever suggestions that will enable the NDPC to recommend the appropriate vision to the president for consideration. My doors are wide-open to him and anyone who wishes to contribute to this national effort”.

Dr. Nduom pointed out that since Dr. Botchwey to go to the media to comment on an unfinished product, he also suggested to the former finance minister that “it was appropriate to go back to understand that South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, Japan, Botswana and Cote d’Ivoire have performed better than Ghana over the past forty years.

“He should provide us with useful insight into what made it impossible for Ghana to achieve significant growth (over 70%) during the P(NDC) period when he was the chief finance and planning officer in Ghana, despite huge inflows of overseas development assistance,” Dr. Nduom dared.

The Regional Integration Minister was sure that there were some lessons that the country could learn from Dr. Botchwey’s experience, which spanned for a period of some 13 years. “In this world, it is possible for a country to learn from other people’s experiences and to do a leapfrog into prosperity in a significant way,” he stated, further disclosing that “I know some countries who did this in a decade and have sustained it for over 30 years”.

He further wanted to know from Dr. Botchwey what obstacles he believes would not make this possible in Ghana.

“Indeed, if we embrace technology in a big way, some of us believe that we can do better than $1000 per-capita income in a decade. But we have a big task to raise the consciousness of Ghanaians to believe that we can do it”.

In the opinion of the Minister, “Ghana suffered from low expectations over the past three decades, this is what led to mediocre results” adding, “it is indeed necessary that for a change, we have high expectation of ourselves and of what we can do for ourselves”.

Dr. Nduom had some advise for NDC’s presidential hopeful: “As a prospective presidential candidate, I would wish to believe that Dr. Botchwey has confidence in Ghanaians and has hopes and aspirations for a better Ghana. I am sure that goals he would want to share with the same Ghanaians that he would seek votes from are goals and targets he expects us to achieve in a decade”.