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| Finance Ministry reacts to APRM report |
6/23/2005 |
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The Finance Ministry says the recently released African Peer Review report relating to the country’s economic performance may not be far from right but does negate the fact that the economy is still better.
The report summed up Ghana’s economy as weak, open to external shocks, heavily dependent on external sources of funding, with weak internal capacity for formulating economic policies and the prevalence of corruption in public administration.
Reacting to these comments, a deputy Finance Minster Dr Anthony Akoto-Osei said the findings made against the country is not exclusive to Ghana but applies to all African countries that depend on a few export commodities.
He told Joy business report, that despite the pronouncements in the African Peer Review Mechanism report; the Ghanaian economy is doing well.
“ It depends on who is doing the summary. If you read the governor’s last report, clearly the economy is robust, I mean we have vulnerable shocks, the oil shock last year was very clear and this is true for the type of economy that we have…” he said.
“ If you look at domestic revenue mobilization ratio, it goes from say ¢4 trillion to ¢23 trillion not a small feat, we have rationalize tariffs and we think that over all we think that we have done well and the reviewers are also entitled to their opinion,” he said.
Dr Akoto Osei said most of the recommendations made in the report are programmes being pursued.
He said government would continue to work at improving the economy.
“ We could do better, sure we need to build capacity, that is something different but compared to what, between 4-5 years ago what was the capacity? Otherwise the economy will not be where it is and so people can sit outside and say weak capacity, sure but the capacity that we have has taken us very far,” he said.
Source: Joy FM (Ghana)
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