An aide to Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, Dr Gideon Boako, has outlined the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in the shift in economic plans of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.
According to Dr Boako, the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it threw the Ghanaian economy into made the Vice President and the economic management team realise there was a need to build a new kind of economy.
Dr Boako, who doubles as an economic advisor for the Veep, said that accounts for the move towards a more digitalized and industrial economy under the NPP government.
“[COVID-19] taught us the need to build an economy that can withstand external shock,” he said whilst speaking at the GRASSAG Week Celebration at the University of Energy and Natural Resources on Thursday, 08 September 2022, in Sunyani themed: The Role of Postgraduate Students in Government’s Economic Recovery Program Post Covid-19.
“…Our continued reliance on imported goods for consumption is not sustainable in the long term; the slow pace of our movement to mechanised agriculture presents huge challenges; the inability of the informal sector to formalise its business activities to mention a few, are all significant gaps that need to be addressed as a matter of urgency,” he said.
“It is very evident that a time such as this requires innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship and a rekindling of the Ghanaian spirit of perseverance and a general belief in the can-do spirit of the youth. We need the can-do spirit and the ingenuity of the youth to rise up to the occasion.” he added.
Dr Boako continued that the current world order calls for an industrialised economy as those economies perform better on average than non-industrialised ones.
Source: theGhanaianVoice.Com