Politics

‘Failure of successive govts to provide grants, subsidies for businesses thwart devt’

Professor Charles Ackah of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), has observed that the failure of successive governments to provide adequate grants and subsidies for expansion of businesses, in comparison with other countries, has thwarted growth and development of the country.

“What the current government needs to do is to begin to solve structural difficulties that will adequately provide grants and subsidies to businesses instead of cutting down on them since the government needs to spend more,” he explained.

According to him, the government needed to spend more to support and assist businesses and not only wait for emergencies to spend and cited how the government provided for the people during COVID-19 pandemic adding that “the government rather needs to spend more by increasing its expenditure in pursuing sustainable development”.

Prof. Ackah indicated that there was the need to increase expenditure in order to regain the confidence of Ghanaians and spur growth to raise Gross Domestic Product since cut on expenditure was not the answer to the country’s socioeconomic downturn.

 “We need the government expenditure to spur the economy, spur confidence, critically increase productivity and not lose confidence in their government and in the system to avoid Arab Spring and lead to social unrest so the government must focus within first and build our confidence.

“The confidence is not supposed to be built for external creditors rather for the citizenry so, if the government says it has no money, it means on average unemployed people, civil servants and business sector are also struggling which affects tax revenue because we are in recession and it will continue,” Prof. Ackah stated.

He admonished Ghanaians not to be too hard on themselves because if the government was struggling, it was manifestation of general suffering of businesses and households so the government could not be too constrained by resources.

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