Professor Ransford Gyampo, a Political Scientist at the University of Ghana, has urged the government to utilise the country’s enormous resource to generate enough revenue.
He insisted that the government had failed woefully to utilise the country’s enormous resources to generate enough revenue.
“We have money and huge resources, just that the political elites are failing to think about how we can effectively and efficiently raise them. Why are we getting only five per cent of our mineral resources and not 50 or 60 per cent as happens elsewhere? Why are we getting only 13 percent of our oil revenues and not 60 percent? ” Prof. Gyampo quizzed
He wondered why the government was unable to accrue enough proceeds from the country’s resources and suggested to the government to renegotiate such deals to get the country more revenues from natural resources being exploited from the nation’s land for the progress, growth and development of other people’s countries.
According to him, instead of government’s undying quest to pass the Electronic Transaction Levy (e-levy), it should rather renegotiate agreements with some of the multinational companies exploiting the country’s resources to settle for better agreements that would generate more revenue for the country.
Reacting to the austerity measures announced by the Minister of Finance last Thursday to cushion the citizenry amid the current economic crisis, the political scientist questioned the rationale behind government’s decision to borrow $2 billion to help stabilise the depreciating local currency and bemoaned the poor state of the country’s economy.
Prof. Gyampo decried the thinking behind borrowing $ 2 billion to put in place a single intervention that would contribute to earning ¢3.6 billion was quite problematic and urged the government to be more committed, dedicated and determined to reviving the economy and shun mere rhetoric.
He called on leadership to think through areas of resource mobilisation beyond rhetoric to help the country achieve beyond mediocrity because of the government’s penchant to spend much effort and waste time just to raise a pittance when the country could actually do more to raise more, adding that “it is unfair to ideals and dogmas of governance which can partly be blamed on the government’s failure on deep-seated ignorance and politicisation of issues.”