Elder statesman and Member of the Council of State, Sam Okudzeto, has criticised successive governments for failing to ensure continuity of national projects started by their predecessors – describing the situation as criminal.
According to him, such practices are not in the nation’s interest as they amount to causing financial loss to the state and must be condemned in no uncertain terms.
“The wastage is enough. How can we progress as a nation when those who superintend over our national projects go ahead with their construction knowing very well that they cannot be completed with the resources available; and why do we start new ones when we know that the budget is too small to finish existing projects?” he questioned.
“Those uncompleted projects that have been left to rot in bushes across the length and breadth of the country run into billions of cedis. Let us stop spending the nation’s money on projects we know we cannot complete,” he advised.
He said this in an interview with B&FT at the Annual Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship E-Jobs4All summit, organised by the Community and Entrepreneurial Development Initiative Ghana (Cedi Ghana) in partnership with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, Queens University, Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre, Leadogo, JACCD Design Institute Africa and Anchora Technologies held in Accra. It was under the theme ‘Entrepreneurship and innovation: the keys to sustainable and decent jobs and wealth creation’.
Need for legislation
To put a stop to the practice, Mr. Okudzeto called for legislation to be introduced that compels governments to complete existing projects before beginning new ones.
He said a law has become necessary to ensure value for the taxpayer’s money and promote development.
E-Jobs4All summit
The E-Job4All project complements the many interventions of government toward entrepreneurial development of the youth; and the benefits, experiences and lessons to be derived from the project will be pivotal in the human capital development of Ghanaian youth.
Meanwhile, High Commissioner of Canada to Ghana, Martine Moreau, indicated that over the years Canada has introduced programmes and services to help SMEs grow in light of emerging trends and taking into account specific challenges of the sector; and the country’s number of women-owned SMEs engaged in exports has more than doubled in recent years, marking a significant step toward gender equality in entrepreneurship.
“The rapid adoption of e-commerce, greatly accelerated during the pandemic, has allowed smaller businesses to thrive by levelling the playing field between small and large firms,” she added.
According to her, Canada has been active in supporting the SME sector in Ghana while also responding to SMEs’ unique challenges as identified by multiple actors in the sector. “Our Feminist International Assistance Policy guides our programming in support of SMEs in Ghana. This policy aims to foster growth that works for everyone – particularly through Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and support to the agricultural sector, as well as climate adaptation and mitigation,” she added; and further said that Canada through the FINEDEV project has supported the development of financial products which address some of the barriers women face in accessing financing, among other things.
The mission of Community and Entrepreneurial Development Initiative Ghana (Cedi Ghana) is to promote national development and positively impact the lives of people while focusing on attacking poverty and expanding robust, entrepreneurial and innovative economies.
