How CPP Will Bring Ghana�s Economy Back Home

On September 22, 2010, the CPP started the process of offering the Ghanaian public alternative policies based on our core values. The Party�s view is that the implementation of our core values will lead to the transformation of our society. Prior to 1966, the CPP had a blueprint for the future progress and development of Ghana as a nation. It was ��a programme of social and economic development based on the use of science and technology to revolutionalise our agriculture and industry.� It held a promise of a brighter future based on prosperity for all Ghanaians, a prosperity that was in part realized until it was abruptly truncated. Our Party believes that it is important to debate the content of what is offered by all the political parties in Ghana as policies and programmes to move our economy forward. In the 4th Republic, Ghanaians have been stuck with slogans and empty promises designed to win votes. It is in this regard that the CPP started the �How the CPP will do it� series of to offer our alternative policies for scrutiny. The CPP believes that Ghana�s problems have remained largely the same because those who have had the opportunity to administer the affairs of Ghana in recent years, have not shared our belief in the CPP core values and hence have been incapable of implementing them. We wish to remind Ghanaians that as the vast majority of our people remain in need of the basics of life, our goal as a Party remains as follows: ��to establish in Ghana a strong and progressive society in which no one will have any anxiety about the basic means of life, about work, food and shelter; where poverty and illiteracy no longer exist and disease is brought under control; and where our educational facilities provide all the children with the best possibilities for the development of their potentialities.� This goal inspired the CPP Cabinet in the First Republic to work with a sense of urgency. It still provides us with enough motivation to move our country through a path that is very different from that which the NDC and the NPP have offered so far in the Fourth Republic. Nana Akufo-Addo, the man elected to lead the NPP to the 2012 elections has been quoted as offering the following as his party�s approach to the Ghanaian economy: �The NPP seeks to create a political economy consistent with basic individual liberties; provide substantially equal opportunities to all citizens; tackle inequalities but not by a centralised state socialism but by a private sector led economy that is allowed to create wealth and the tax revenues that the state can accrue from such free entrepreneurships shall be then invested in the social sectors to create greater opportunities for the lesser well offs.� He added that, �We must rebuild the confidence of the Ghanaian entrepreneur. We must not shy away from picking local winners and supporting them deliberately to become regional and continental winners.� The CPP wishes to inform Ghanaians that this so-called ��private sector led economy� has been promised by NDC1, NPP1, NDC2 and has not been realized because these administrations have refused to recognize that Ghanaians continue to be shortchanged by a market approach to the economy that has liberalized trade unnecessarily and by the inability to use the purchasing power and regulatory authority of the state to give our people an advantage in our own country. One characteristic of post colonial economies is the structural balance of payment deficit on trade account that serves as the source of their dependency and poverty. Their terms of trade make them net exporters of capital to the developed economies. It is in this regard that the deficit reduction strategy of the NPP and NDC governments will neither reverse nor eradicate the structure of trade deficit that is requisite for development. They treat the symptoms of trade deficit. That is why we are where we are after NPP/NDC rule in the 4th Republic. We feel very strongly that it is the blind and hurried want to put a label of ��centralised state socialism� to create an artificial model that can be perceived as �different� that is in part preventing our forward march. No country in the world has advanced and created prosperity for its people without the state using its central authority to support its entrepreneurs and creating a favourable domestic environment for investment. A private sector engine without fuel, body, tyres etc. cannot and will not move. The use of the central state authority for the benefit of its people is good! Indeed it is the centralized state that will ensure social justice. When the NPP talks about ��picking local winners�, who will do it? The private sector or the state? It was the state that has done it successfully in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and China. It was the state that recently saved the automobile industry in the USA not the private sector. We are asking Ghanaians to shy away from people who will offer artificial solutions that have failed as they will remain campaign-induced empty promises. It is instructive to note that the �successes� touted by the NPP1 Administration are socialist-oriented National Health Insurance, Capitation Grant, School Feeding Program, LEAP and the National Youth Employment Programme. In contrast, the Convention People�s Party�s objective is to �bring the economy back home�. This unique signature has been captured in the official manifestos of the Party since 2004. The objective is consistent with the Party�s principle of self determination. It means that the CPP�s economic policy will be felt and as a result, known in every village, town and municipality in all corners of our country. Our economic objective is different from what has been offered by the NDC 1 & 2 and NPP 1 Administrations. In practical terms it means that the CPP will take an aggressive posture to wean the economy away from the IMF, the World Bank and other international finance institutions. It means that the CPP will not mortgage the future of our children and our natural resources to our detriment and the benefit of other nations as we believe the STX Korea agreement and existing oil and gas agreements will do. It also means that we will use the right of the state to tax to discourage unbridled importation of everything under the earth and use the revenues to promote the development of our own local enterprises. We will raise the funds needed to execute our programmes by supporting the growth and development of domestic industries and creating jobs at home. The foregoing is by the way of the backdrop that enlightens our development approach. The contemporary Nkrumaist approach is government intervention for the development of the productive private sector in the agricultural export commodity and import substitution sectors to eradicate the structural trade deficit.