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Resign If You Do Not Feel Comfortable With Your Role As The Chairman Of The Economic Management Committee – Economist Tells Bawumia

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Prof Godfred Alufa Bokpin, an economist at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), has given a piece of advice to Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

He counselled the Vice President of Ghana, who doubles as the Chairman of the Economic Management Committee, to resign if he is not comfortable with his role.

Prof Bokpin gave the advice when speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, on Friday, July 15, after the Vice President’s address on Thursday, July 14.

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“I sympathise with the Vice President. He is always at the face of the NPP’s economic engineering engine, we were told. I believe that if he had enough control maybe things would not be like this.

“If the Vice President feels uncomfortable about his role as the Chair of the Economic Management Committee and lacks the influence, he should resign. It would serve him better [and] the reason I’m saying so is that it will help him maintain his integrity. He has to take the bold decision,” Prof Godfred Alufa Bokpin said.

He made the comment on the Super Morning Show, on Friday, July 15, following the Vice President’s address on Thursday, July 14.

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During Dr Bawumiah’s address at the Accra Business School, he outlined four major factors that have caused the country to seek a bailout from the IMF.

He mentioned that the major factors as; the GH¢17 billion energy sector excess capacity payments, GH¢25 billion expenditure on the banking sector clean-up exercise and GH¢12 billion expenditure on COVID-19 social interventions, as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, increasing prices of fuel on the world market.

However, Professor Bokpin believes that Ghana’s economic woes are not only attributable to the factors mentioned above.

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“Since independence that we’ve been to the fund, we never gathered the courage to admit that we brought this upon ourselves. What we have successfully done is embark on a blame game. So in all our visits to the fund, you can identify both internal and external weaknesses such as corruption, wastefulness, borrowing spree (for internal) and the external factors also come,” he stated.

“As part of the exit conditions, we promised the IMF and ourselves certain reforms that we were going to implement that will prevent us from going to the fund. We had them on paper and speak eloquently to [the IMF officials] but in the end, we missed out on the details and the lessons got missing as well.

“Until we see concrete steps, structural reforms, productivity-enhancing reforms, forget it. [Ghana will continue to visit the IMF,” the Professor further stated.

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