An Assessment of the Proposed US$50 Billion Century Bond for Ghana
October 16, 2018Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget [Occasional Paper 17]
October 28, 2018Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget [6]
Policy Brief 6. Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget
The Ghanaian economy has maintained virtually its “colonial structure” 60 years after independence as it still depends largely on cocoa, gold, timber and recently oil as the country’s main export commodities. Exported in raw and unprocessed form, these commodities fetch low prices on international markets where Ghana is a price taker, rendering the economy vulnerable to terms-of-trade shocks. The agriculture sector’s contribution to total output has been falling due to declining productivity. The manufacturing base of the economy has also been shrinking as many state-owned industries privatized years ago have closed down and many private businesses are suffocating under the weight of numerous obstacles. Services have emerged as the leading sector of the economy, but productivity and incomes are low in the sector. The combination of all these factors has slowed Ghana’s economic growth for the most part of the last two decades, with serious implications for job creation.
This paper looks at how a strong and broad-based economic growth can be achieved to significantly create jobs in order to reduce unemployment in the country