The Dean of the School of Business, University of Cape Coast, Professor John Gartchie Gatsi has bemoaned the absence of the independence of the Central Bank of Ghana (BoG).
He said the BoG structure ideally is supposed to be independent but it is not due to the governance system of the country.
Professor Gatsi made this statement in an interview on TV3 in response to the question of independence of the Bank of Ghana about the latest development of the arrest of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emelfiele on charges of an ongoing investigation of his office and his planned reforms in the financial sector of the economy.
The Dean of the School of Business, UCC said the Central Bank most often tends to take instructions from those who are in the political space and this he believes weakens the structure of the institution as its independence is thrown overboard.
“The idea of the independent institution is that as soon as you are appointed, whether you are party chairman before or you are party spokesperson before, as soon as you are appointed, your allegiance and loyalty is to the institution and the state. Your allegiance is not to any political party or any political activists. But it seems that is not what is happening in Ghana. The institution tends to take instruction from those who are supposed to be in the political and we begin to see activities that show a resemblance of an institution without independence”, he said.
He cited Fiscal dominance as a clear example of weak structures and infiltration of the political authority into the management of the central bank of Ghana.
“If your institution is independent you will not be recording huge influence on your economic management from the perspective of fiscal dominance. Fiscal dominance is a clear example of weak structures. So, if that is not the case, the managers of the economy would not say that we need so, so and so amount of money to keep the economy going and the central bank keep supporting the government in doing that irrespective of the rules and the laws available to us”.
Professor John Gatsi indicated there is also the need to stop the importation and rather implement measures that ensure that the production of those staple commodities is vigorously pursued.
“Our manufacturing base is not strong. So, if we decided to stop the importation of certain sensitive commodities and items into the country, it demands that immediately we should galvanize every effort to ensure we engage in production. We need to stop importation as we take policy measures to ensure that production of those items is vigorously pursued, and then that will be meaningful engagement”.
Professor John Gatsi concluded by urging the government to work on competitive pricing for the production of domestic staple items to help gain a patronage advantage over imported ones.
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Source: Eric Sekyi/ATLFMNEWS
