The Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) has cast doubt on the potential of any International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervention to transform Ghana’s economy.
According to Professor Peter Quartey, the fundamental structure of Ghana’s economy was weak and until some drastic measures were taken, successive governments would continue to seek various supports from the Fund.
Prof. Quartey made this observation at the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG)’s Round table meeting in Accra on Tuesday.
It was on the theme “Managing IMF’s expectation and Ghana’s Economy: The Way Forward”.
“We’ve been to the IMF 17 times and we’ll keep going unless we change the structure of our economy. The structure remains weak. We produce raw materials and export them in their raw state. We barely add value to them,” he said on Tuesday.
Ghana has been riddled with dire economic crisis for months. The situation has caused the government to seek intervention from the IMF.
While negotiations are ongoing, government is optimistic that should the deal be successful, the nation’s economy will resuscitate.
He noted that the intervention is only a short-term solution and not one that is sustainable.
According to him, it was time for Ghanaians to purposefully change their taste for foreign goods. “We are very import dependent. We import literally everything into the country. Whether it is produced locally or not, we have an insatiable taste to import the goods.But a point has to be made, let’s look at what we can produce and then we can put in policies to restrict the importation of the products that we have self-sufficiency in producing,” he noted
