Dignitaries in a group photograph at the National Development Summit in Accra
Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) of Ghana, Prof. George Gyan-Baffour, has stated that different government manifestos among many other factors have accounted for the country’s inability to prepare and implement a long-term developmental framework effectively.
Speaking at the National Development Summit in Accra, Prof. Gyan-Baffour asserted that the political parties, upon forming government, come in with their manifestos, prepared based on their ideological persuasions, while abandoning the policy development plans developed by the commission.
According to Prof. Gyan-Baffour, the commission together with stakeholders has been tasked with developing documents under Article 36 (4) of the Constitution.
He said the document, when developed will be known as the ‘Long-Term National Development Perspective Framework (LTNDPF)’ or the ‘Ghana Vision 2025’ which will contain the goals to be pursued as a country, sets of objectives for each goal, strategic direction, and a set of targets to be realised.
“This LTNDPF will not take away the parties’ and government’s rights to come out with manifestos that tell the electorate what they intend to do. It will be guided and used as a reference point for preparing their manifestos. This will ensure that the long-term vision, goals, objectives, and strategic direction for the country’s development derived from the constitution are not compromised,” he said.
Prof. Gyan-Baffour also established that the document is not intended to supplant existing documents such as the 40-year plan but rather to simplify the focus on development efforts in the documents.
Paramount Chief of the Asokore Asante, Nana Susubribi Krobea Asante, who doubled as the Chairman of the summit, said countries like South Korea, and Malaysia embarked on a comprehensive development plan that provided for the expansion and strengthening of their economy.
He said the country’s failure to execute long-term development is due to the exigencies of partisan politics, a myopic approach governed by short-term interests.
Director-General, NDPC, Dr. Kodjo Esseim Mensah-Abrampa, said through the emergence of COVID-19, many of the assumptions stated in the 40 years’ development plans were not held which resulted in the need to review the plan to respond to the immediate needs of the country.
“It is very necessary to look at our economic indicators and social indicators all showing that we have gone down somewhere very close to the earth and we need to come out. A lot of effort has been put in, and we see it coming up. We need to accelerate and project ourselves to attain our vision,” he said.
Dr. Mensah-Abrampa added that the development of the long-term plan will be detailed as a pragmatic and flexible document that will contain a vision, a set of goals and objectives that allows government and politicians to decide on how to achieve the targets.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke