Planning For Our Future

The preparation of another plan which is expected to help the country to achieve a middle-income status is in the offing.

No Ghanaian who claims to have the welfare of the people at heart would kick against such an objective. After all, that is supposed to be the aim of all politicians who want to lead the country.

The country is marking its 50th anniversary of political independence and that poses a big challenge to us as a people to imagine where we would be in the next 50 years.

It would mean that all our human resource capacity should be brought on board so that the plan would be a national plan and not a particular party's.

Indeed, we have advocated persistently that there should be a common ground in our national development which will serve as a blueprint for all our political leaders.

We have consistently done so without prejudice to the style that a particular group of leaders would adopt to achieve the vision or plan set out.

It is our considered opinion that the jubilee anniversary should make our leaders and all those who really want the country to progress as fast as it should to come forward with their ideas, contributions and suggestions to move the country towards a middle-income status.

A stocktaking exercise of our past 50 years clearly points to the fact that if we had been a little careful in analysing issues from realistic points of view and not along partisan lines, things would have been different; we would have seen much progress.

Indeed, we would have avoided military interventions because they would have been useless ventures.

As primary producers of commodities, we are hugely at the mercy of events on the world market. But how much are we prepared to forego to enable us to become self-sufficient in food production, for instance?

How ready are we to encourage the processing of some of the commodities that we produce, especially food, to reduce the high incidence of post-harvest losses?

How about skills? Singapore has limited natural resources but it has been able to make adequate use of the skills which were provided for the people to become one of the Asian Tigers.

Undoubtedly, the educational reforms which will be launched shortly should not lose sight of skills in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), since it is the wave on which the world is sailing.

We have every reason to blaze the economic trail, just as we did with the political one. What is needed is some amount of consensus on national issues.

Consequently, we make a passionate appeal to all who care and claim to love their country to make their contributions towards the road map to attaining a middle-income status.