PSI Have Lost Focus - Analyst

The concept of the President?s Special Initiatives being implemented by the Kufuor Administration has come under fire with some policy analysts suggesting that the vision of the policy has lost focus.

Others have also attacked the policy itself calling it ad-hoc.


The NPP government instituted the President?s Special Initiative as a tool to help create employment and reduce rural poverty.


The concept seeks to marry the bare features of farmers? co-operatives with that of a limited liability company with government and private investors providing the needed resources and market access for the development of a particular sector.


The initiative kicked off with the PSI on Cassava Starch and that on Textile and Garments.


Now, although the concept has been replicated with several other PSIs being implemented, there have even been appeals to President Kufour by operators in some sectors of the economy for more PSIs.

But that to some, including Dr. David Percy an Agri-business consultant, is exactly the problem with the initiative ? too many of them.


Dr. Percy explains that by itself the PSI concept is not a bad one if it is eventually integrated into the main policy framework of government.


But other policy analysts including Mr. Augustine Adongo, the Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of Associations of Ghanaian Exporters, have been less charitable in their assessment of PSI policy calling it ad-hoc.


Mr. Adongo argues that ad-hoc policies such as the PSI tend to crowd out the imagination, initiative and entrepreneurship of the private sector.