Copenhagen consensus centre to help Government to avoid extra spending

Bjorn Lomborg the President of Copenhagen consensus centre on Thursday said the centre is working with the Government of Ghana to avoid the extra spending in order to make policies for the future.

The centre is a US non-profit think tank that organises the Copenhagen consensus a conference of economists held every four years, where potential solutions to global issues are examined and prioritised using the cost-benefit analysis.

He said the centre was in Ghana to look at how to prioritise for Ghana and would be looking out for an economist to look at where the government could spend an extra cedi and maximise benefits.

“Ghana priorities is going to tell you where to spend extra resources and do the very most good and we are working with the best Ghanaian economist and academia to look at what challenges they should look out for’’ said Mr Lomborg.

He said in Haiti and Bangladesh, the people were asked their most important issues both international and national and with that, the economist was able to find out the cause and benefit on when you spend extra money.

He mentioned immunisation, a way of making children safe from dying and getting a better economic performance like schooling for them to know that education is important topped their priorities.

He said the centre was here to help economists to find the smart ways to make policies for the future so that they would be better off than they were because they had chosen a smarter way.

He said ‘’Ghana spends about extra GHC 11 billion every year on her budget, why should it be so?’’.

Mr Samuel kobin Anim the Government statistician said the country was already prioritising and also needed to practise more of quantification informed prioritisation.