‘Private sector competition inadequate’

Efforts at improving competition in Ghana’s private sector appear to have yielded limited results over the past years.

Dr Regina O. Adutwum, Director General of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), who disclosed this recently in Accra during a day’s engagement organized by her outfit for the media, said this has come about because the implementation of the Private Sector Development Strategy (I & II) had only succeeded in addressing some of the institutional legal bottlenecks that were militating against the expansion of the private sector.

She said a number of challenges beset the implementation of the GSGDA I and these included inefficiencies in the use and management of public funds and other national resources, the relatively large fiscal and balance of payment imbalance, which was becoming cyclical and also the declining growth of the agriculture sector, which employs about 41 percent of the country’s labour force.

There were also weal linkages between agriculture and industry, slow pace in providing citizens, especially the youth with secure and sustainable jobs, as well as the growing disparities in income across socio-economic groups and geographical areas, among others.

To address the aforementioned challenge, Dr Adutwum said a successor medium-term national development policy framework – Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA ii) – was being prepared. It would have to consider 72 focal areas, address 665 issues, work on 219 policy objectives and employ 1,136 strategies.

She added that Ghana’s highest real gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to be recorded in 2017 when the full impact of the establishment of the Ghana Infrastructure Fund and the projected production of oil and gas from the Tweneboa, Enyera and Ntomme (TEN) come on stream.

Ghana’s real GDP will stand at 12 percent. Dr Robert Dodoo, an official of NDPC, in a presentation, referred to a 2010 Population and Housing Census Report, which said 67.4 percent of Ghana’s 71.5 percent economically active population aged 15 and above, were employed.

Of this, the private sector employed 93 percent of the economically active population.