Economy Has Not Received Massive Capital Injection

The Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Peter Adjetey, has said the economy of Ghana has not experienced any massive injections of capital in the past few decades.

The speaker said this at the 13th presidential ball of the Rotary Club of Accra at Achimota at the close of last month.

He said the under investment had been persistent and this had resulted in high government spending.

He announced that it was based on these that the government was pursuing policies, new initiatives and developments such as the presidential initiatives to address them.

He said the insufficient attention to growth as a requirement of development, illustrated for instance in many African countries by a reluctance to create attractive investment opportunities for private capital, local or foreign, had led to a situation where demands were now made for foreign aid to be used to meet the growing shortfalls in domestic revenue.

He was, however, sorry to say that in Ghana, it still seemed to follow this economic philosophy.

"The base of rapid economic growth as history and experience tell us is industrialization," he noted. He said Industrialism was an almost universal goal of modern nations. The industrialization process has its set of imperatives, which all countries must see to if they hope to conduct a successful march to industrial growth.

"The phenomenal rise of the Asian Tigers presents us with a frame of reference for the consideration of what solutions are available to us in an effort to achieve an economic take-off.

"This phenomenon was characterized by the following massive injections of labour, injections of capital and technology.

The above injections were financed by an exceedingly high level of savings and investments (savings amount to 35% of GDP),wise government direction provided through a clear industrial policy, capitalist, profit seeking mentality, strong work, family and society ethic within a cohesive, conformist and low taxes among others."

Touching on the activities of Rotary clubs, he said Rotarians had responded to the call for development by raising funds to finance projects to improve the lives of the less privileged in society.

He said that the rotary club of Accra, Achimota had completed the Assessment and Resource Centre for children with hearing disabilities and a community clinic at Samsam, 12 km north of Accra, equipped with the best equipment for infant vision and hearing impairment in West Africa.