Govt pledges use of research findings to transform economy

The government has affirmed its commitment to use research findings to help in the formulation of policies to transform Ghana's economy from import dependency to an export-led economy. A Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Kweku Ricketts-Hagan, told the Daily Graphic that it was necessary to implement such findings to place the country in a strategic position to harness its resources.

"It is therefore important that we do not only engage researchers, but use their findings to formulate policies that can accelerate our development," he indicated. Mr Ricketts-Hagan was speaking in an interview on the fringes of a policy symposium in Accra last Thursday. Organised by the Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA) in collaboration with the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI), the symposium brought together policy makers from the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Finance and some academicians to deliberate on how to bridge the gap between policy formulation processes and research.

Findings of a research on "Determinants of Ghana's Bilateral Trade Flows," funded by DRUSSA, were presented at the symposium by the researcher, Dr George Adu, a lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

Import-dependent
Mr Ricketts-Hagan said Ghana was a commodity-based economy that exported its produce in its raw state. The government, he said, was, however, desirous of adding value to such commodities to boost the country's export trade. "We want to turn Ghana into an export-led and manufacturing-base economy to help close the trade gap in terms of our exports and imports," he stated.

Economic stability
The minister said one of the challenges the government was working hard to address was the stabilisation of the cedi. He partly attributed the depreciation of the cedi to the high volumes of commodity importation into the country. Mr Ricketts-Hagan said such imbalances needed to be corrected because "if you export more it would have impact on your Gross Domestic Product (GDP)".

Researcher
Dr Adu called for the promotion and strengthening of trade agreements among African countries. He entreated managers of the country's economy to ensure the stabilisation of inflation "so that nominal depreciation could improve the competitiveness of Ghana's exports on the world

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