Even Rawlings abandoned Vision 2020 – Adei

Former Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Professor Stephen Adei, has bemoaned the lack of commitment to development plans in the country.

While blaming successive governments for the failure, he singled out former President Jerry John Rawlings under whose regime the country crafted the Vision 2020 agenda which never came to fruition.

The development plan introduced in 1996 was supposed to make Ghana a middle-income country at the level of Singapore.

It spelt out targets which government was supposed to achieve by the set date for various sectors, a majority was missed.

Professor Adei was of the view that the whole plan, despite how good it was to spur development, had been relegated by Mr Rawlings even before 2000.

“In reality, it was a good document but there was not even a commitment by the government to Vision 2020 and subsequent governments even did not make any reference to it at all,” he lamented in an interview on Joy FM Monday to discuss the policy as the target date was due.

He continued: “Ghana did prepare a nice document but neither did the Rawlings administration for the four years nor the Kufuor administration or the Atta Mills-Mahama ever used it as a framework for prosecuting Ghana’s development and therefore actually it what nothing more than a nice document for the shelve and that does not deliver development”.

In his opinion, the development witnessed in the country for the past two decades has been by “chance”.

“Any target was not because of Vision 2020,” he said, attributing it to the normal progression of implementing successive government manifestos or agenda.