Our democracy is too huge, expensive – Bokpin

An economist at the University of Ghana, Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin has bemoaned the expensive nature of Ghana’s democracy. According to him, the cost of running the country’s affairs does not allow for the financing of developmental projects in the country. Speaking to GhanaWeb at the 11th Ghana Economic Forum, Professor Bokpin cautioned the government to be efficient with its spending. “As we are excited about the great potential to collect more revenue, we must b advising the government to be efficient with expenditure because in this country we have been very wasteful to the extent that the way we have been operationalizing our democracy is so expensive. “The cost of running our democracy in terms of the size of government and all of that is just too huge and at the end of the day, it leaves very little for where money has to go for growth to be engineered,” he intimated. He also advised that a lean staff structure be adopted across all sectors of the economy. “Beyond that, we must replicate that across state-owned enterprises. If you look at their staff strength which has gone up since 2017, we are creating deputy CEOs and all of that. This is the best time for Ghana to look at Ghana and say what is tolerable and what cannot be allowed,” he noted. Watch the latest episode of BizTech below: SSD/KPE

An economist at the University of Ghana, Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin has bemoaned the expensive nature of Ghana’s democracy. According to him, the cost of running the country’s affairs does not allow for the financing of developmental projects in the country. Speaking to GhanaWeb at the 11th Ghana Economic Forum, Professor Bokpin cautioned the government to be efficient with its spending. “As we are excited about the great potential to collect more revenue, we must b advising the government to be efficient with expenditure because in this country we have been very wasteful to the extent that the way we have been operationalizing our democracy is so expensive. “The cost of running our democracy in terms of the size of government and all of that is just too huge and at the end of the day, it leaves very little for where money has to go for growth to be engineered,” he intimated. He also advised that a lean staff structure be adopted across all sectors of the economy. “Beyond that, we must replicate that across state-owned enterprises. If you look at their staff strength which has gone up since 2017, we are creating deputy CEOs and all of that. This is the best time for Ghana to look at Ghana and say what is tolerable and what cannot be allowed,” he noted. Watch the latest episode of BizTech below: SSD/KPE