Mahama, I Could Have Done Better Than Senchi NEF Experts

Did we need to go to Senchi to find out what is wrong with the economy of Ghana and come up with twenty jibber jabber solutions? Definitely 'NO'.You don't need to go to Senchi to find out what is wrong with the country' economy. As a layman standing afar, I could have told the government three things it needs to do to curtail the hardships our citizens are going through.

1. Decentralize the government

2.Cut down government expenses

3. Stop borrowing

What is wrong is that, we are spending too much than what we are earning(REVENUE). We need to live within our means by cutting expenses. We spend a whopping 70 percent of government revenue in paying workers when it should have not exceeded 30 percent. It is not like this government is not aware what it should do to address the problems but it lacks the political courage to do the right thing. Running a country is not too complicated, it is just like running a business or running a household. If your monthly income is four thousand Ghana cedis(GHc4,000), you cannot have five thousand (GHc5,000) monthly expenses without going into debt and that is what we are doing as a country. You have to borrow to make up for the extra expenses and that borrowing comes up with interest payment too.

GT is symptomatic of what is wrong with Ghana now. We have 700,000 government employees when we only need about 350,000 government workers but the Politicians are cowards to do the right thing. If Kuffour had laid off the 4000 workers who were drawing salaries but were not producing anything to the value of GT, Ghanaians would have complained loudly for being callous government who don't care about the welfare of the people. We have to cut the size of this government to 350,000 to save at least two billion($2billion) a year.

Government can do this without any attrition. The Churches in Ghana are demanding their nission schools back, from Elementary to secondary schools like Mfanstipim, Adisadel, Prempeh College, Opoku Ware, Wesley Girls, Holy Child, St Louis, etc, the government should go ahead and cede to the churches to manage these schools .

Some services being provided by the government should be privatized.

We don't need thirty Ministries. Some of the Ministries should be combined and others like Information Ministry should be eliminated, their services are being performed by the Communication members at the Presidency.

Secondly, we should cut down government borrowing. 25 percent of our revenue is used to service our loans or government debt as interest payment of over $20 billion leaving only 5 percent for infrastructure development. Doing this will stop the free fall of the value of the cedi as compared to the dollar and other international currencies. It will also slow the rise of inflation.

Decentralization will be a bonanza to the country. First it will cut down on corruption. It will also ease congestions and cut accidents on our roads. People will not need to go to Accra everytime to transact business like getting a passport, processing pensions payment and other businesses.

The Senchi Economic forum came up with twenty two suggestions most of them worthless with gibberish big grammar and technical jargons that are not worth the paper they are written on and will not see the light of day of being implemented and even if they are implemented, will not make one iota of a difference.

Justice Sarpong

(CARDINAL of TRUTH) Message 1 of 32