Electricity essential if 24-hour economy will be implemented – Prof. Gatsi

Dean of Business School at the University of Cape Coast, Professor John Gatsi, has noted that the availability of power supply is key in the production process of a 24-hour economy.

According to him, the move will make businesses competitive on the international market.

Speaking on Citi TV's Big Issue programme, Prof. Gatsi indicated that the capacity of local industries need to be boosted to service the high demand of the Ghanaian market.

He said, “Broadly, we need to incentivize by providing efficient security for some of the cities and sectors that we want to target. Power is key in the production process; electricity must definitely be worked on for us to become competitive.”

“If you want to quickly address the huge consumption of tomatoes, ginger, garlic, rice in the country, the demand is there, so no problem; it’s the capacity that is not there. We have to incentivize the capacity within the 24-hour in the production of these areas. The market is already there, so we don’t have a problem with that. Even where the market is, we need to also look at how the 24-hour will incentivize competitive production," he added.

The economist further said, “If we are going to incentivize production in general and foster a 24-hour economy in this capacity to be able to feed into it, then we need not to look at only the market, but we also need to look at the competitiveness of production. If you want to consider the export market, that is where we should be looking at whether the market exists or not. All these nuances within the operation will have to be considered as we go along. Competitive production is key to the success of this agenda.”

It would be recalled that during the commencement of John Dramani Mahama's two-day tour in the Ahafo Region, he said the next NDC government will roll out a 24-hour economy.

He emphasized that the initiative would provide tax incentives and other advantages to businesses that voluntarily participate in the programme.

According to him, the overarching goal is to generate additional employment opportunities for the people of Ghana.

What is the 24-Hour Economy?

The 24-hour economy is simply an economic strategy that involves putting measures in place to ensure that businesses across various sectors in an economy operate both at night and in the day. In order words, there would be a night economy and a day economy.

The strategy is aimed at ensuring that the economy is as vibrant in the day as well as in the night so as to create more employment opportunities.

So essentially, businesses are to put measures in place to ensure that they are in operation every hour of the day. These measures include employing more staff and running a shift system.

SA/MA

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