A management consultant, Dr. Kwabena Donkor has lashed out at the government economic mitigation policy, describing it as “intellectually lazy.”

The mitigation policy announced by President Kufuor in May was to reduce the effects of global price hikes of food and crude oil on Ghanaians.

But Dr. Donkor said the policy was “a knee jerk reaction, populist and just pretense by government to suggest it was doing something to remedy the situation, when in actual fact it was doing nothing.”

He said with prices still going up the policy was not sustainable, and “doomed to fail.”

On Newsfile, a news analysis programme on Joy Fm, to discuss the effects of the mitigation policy, Dr. Donkor who was a technocrat under the NDC regime, singled out the subsidy on rice importation inherent in mitigation policy for criticism.

“The removal of subsidy on rice was at best scandalous and at worse a disincentive to local rice production”

He said the NPP government before assuming the reigns of government in 2001 promised to cut back on rice production, “and for the government to go to the extent of subsiding the importation was at best, crazy,” he snapped.

"Government should empower local rice farmers to increase rice production, instead of the importation policy it has adopted," he added.

When the host of the programme Akwasi Sarpong made reference to an earlier submission by the Finance Minister Kojo Baah Wiredu that the souring prices in the local market was due to exploitation of consumers by selfish and insensitive retailers, Kwabena Donkor disagreed rather vehemently.

He said the Minister had no right to complain about people exploiting consumers, when there was no monitoring mechanism in place. “If you are not doing that you are not being thorough,” he insisted.

Government spokesperson on Finance, Kweku Kwarteng, said government’s intervention was not to control prices, but to take away government taxes that contributed to the souring prices, adding the situation would have been worse.

Contributing to the programme via telephone, Kweku Kwarteng rebutted claims that the programme had failed.

He said government's decision to stabilise petroleum prices which was part of the intervention has worked to perfection.

“There are no quarrels these days at our lorry stations, because the daily and weekly increases in prices had stopped, which has been useful to many Ghanaians.” He stated.

He also disputed claims by Dr. Donkor that there were no monitoring team in place to evaluate the policy, saying, the duty of the monitoring task force was not to ‘police’ or ensure prices were adhered to across board, but to monitor and propose measures to achieve the reason for which the intervention was put in place.

While conceding that government had not done enough towards rice production in Ghana, he disclosed that the nation will meet 50% of its rice consumption, due to the policies such as rice for Africa and in-land rice production policies currently being implemented by government.

He hinted government is considering reviewing the entire mitigation policy in the coming days.


Author: Nathan Gadugah