President Kufuor urges bankers to chart a new course

Accra, March 2, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor on Tuesday said it behoves banking institutions to chart a new course in their operations with regard to the improvement in the economy.

He said, " hard-headed bankers should not lock themselves into calculated pessimism and extreme conservatism in an emerging economy such as ours."

"Your attitude should be positive to enable you design innovative products to mobilise savings and provide venture capital to support developments on the scale that will promote growth and improve the standard of living for all," he added.

President Kufuor made the call when delivering the keynote address at a two-day Symposium organised by the Bank of Ghana (BOG) in Accra. The Symposium under the theme: " From Stabilisation to Growth" was to deliberate on building the structural foundations of stability and accelerated economic development.

It was also about the strategy and the challenge of making the transition from stabilisation to rapid growth; of how to consolidate the gains and engineer sustained GDP growth and in fundamental way how to catch up with the dynamic and growing emerging markets of the rest of the world.

President Kufuor said the nation's socio-economy had successfully been positioned on a stable platform to enable Ghanaians to launch it on an accelerated growth path, adding, "Currently, the stabilisation of the domestic debts is one of the major policy goals."

He said it was therefore, important to capitalise on the results that had been achieved so far to move the economy forward and place the nation in a position to guarantee enhanced welfare of its citizens.

Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said the Ministry and the BOG had worked harmoniously and that had benefited the country to stabilise the economy.

He said never had the economy attained a continuous growth for about 2-3 years until the New Patriotic Party (NPP) assumed power and had managed to sustained growth for four years continuously from 3.7 per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the current level of 5.2 per cent GDP, which had been a great achievement that should be sustained.

Mr Osafo-Maafo said with achievement in the continuous GDP growth, it was time government disciplined itself with its monetary and fiscal policies during the election year to put Ghana on a sustainable growth. Dr Paul A. Acquah, Governor of the BOG said the symposium was timely considering developments in the economy over the last three years with the achievement of a good degree of macroeconomic stabilisation under a fiscal and monetary regime oriented towards disinflation.

He said an independent monetary policy coordinated with prudently set fiscal framework and public expenditure management had begun to influence price and wage setting behaviour bringing expectations to converge towards price stability rather than revert to the high and variable inflation rate of the preceding years.

The Governor said the stabilisation process that began in 2001 was taking hold, the economic indicators were good in terms of inflation, fiscal and external balances, reserves, GDP growth and business confidence.

He said the economy had responded well to policies and indeed the thrust of the current debate was with regard, not so much to the sustainability of the stabilisation process, but rather what were the benefits to be gained and who were benefiting from the stability that had been observed, adding, "The short answer is national welfare."