‘Declare a state of emergency, tell Ghanaians we are in economic crisis’ — Kwame Pianim tells gov’t

Kwame Pianim, a renowned economist has called on the government to declare a state of emergency and openly acknowledge the country's deep economic crisis.

Mr. Pianim said declaring a state of emergency is a first step to showing some seriousness and readiness to tackle the situation.

“Tell Ghanaians we are in a deep crisis - those are the words that the IMF uses, “in a deep crisis” and to solve this deep crisis and emerge from it successfully, we have to be serious. The government should declare a state of emergency and inform every Ghanaian that we are all facing an economic crisis, requiring us to tighten our belts," Pianim stated firmly.

During an interview on TV3’s middays news, the Economist highlighted two critical aspects that require immediate attention.

Firstly, he emphasized the importance of implementing symbolic measures that demonstrate Ghana's remorsefulness in curbing excessive expenditures and borrowing.

“There are two things - symbolic catching that will encourage the bilateral donors and their development partners to say that we are serious and we want to do something about these expenditure sprees and borrowing sprees that always land us in IMF programs,” he stated.

Mr. Pianim also stressed the need to significantly reduce debt interest payments and embark on sustainable revenue streams through strategic borrowing for income-generating projects.

“The second one is cutting deeply our revenues cover and interest on our debts which means that whenever we borrow, we’re going to borrow some of it on projects that will create a stream of income that’ll help us to finance and pay for whatever we borrowed,” he added.

Pianim further emphasized the importance of aligning expenditures with available resources, urging the government to exercise fiscal prudence.

He suggested that the government should lead by example and make symbolic cuts in the size of appointees to create a lean and efficient administration.

“Some of the symbolic cutting will show that they’re reducing the size of government to make it lean and smart and that expenditures that are not going to yield output are going to be suspended,” he said.