Tackling graft, waste will improve governance – Prof. Bokpin

President John Dramani Mahama can do well as the leader of the nation by assuring people that he will deal with inefficiency, corruption, wastage in the public sector, and public sector attitudes to work, Professor Godfred Bokpin, Head of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School, has said.

According to him, these remain the main problems Ghana is saddled with, hence any manifesto ahead of this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections must be geared towards solving these challenges.

Prof Bokpin has noted that the campaign promises of Mr Mahama ahead of the elections are unattainable and unrealistic.

President John Mahama, during his presentation of the highlights of the NDC’s 2016 manifesto on Tuesday September 13, made 130 promises as he bids for a second term of office. He indicated that Ghana’s economic transformation would take off in 2017 should he be re-elected for another four-year term.

But speaking on the campaign promises made by the president in an interview with Emefa Apawu, host of 505 on Class91.3FM on Wednesday, September 14, Prof Bokpin said: “We have to be realistic in our promises and I want to believe that one thing that the NDC could actually do is…performance analysis of its own governance, analyse the variance. You wanted to achieve this, you couldn’t. What were the reasons? That will inform the kind of promises they will make going forward because Ghanaians are not looking for high-level promises which, really, I don’t think we will be able to achieve. I think we want a government that will be realistic, a government that will say this is how far we can go and this is the level of efficiency that we will want to bring to bear.

He added: “…I don’t think that they (NDC) are being realistic. Sometimes I get the impression that their understanding of the economy, with all due respect…the way they talk sometimes I don’t think they are really on the ground. I don’t want to blame the president here because the president doesn’t need to know everything. His advisors [and] economic team should be able to be realistic and be frank with (him) as to what is actually achievable given our resource constraints.

“President Mahama can do well by assuring Ghanaians that when it comes to efficiency, corruption, these are things that [he is] actually going to deal with in (his) second term because that is where Ghana’s problem is. Ghana’s problems are the level of inefficiency, the level of corruption, public sector attitude to work, the lack of performance indicators, and how to measure it, the wastage in the public sector culminating in a huge wage bill. Any government that will come and cannot put a hold on these things cannot do well.”