IMANI president Franklin Cudjoe says Ghana can still achieve its development targets with only 20 ministers including deputies.

He is convinced the number of ministers attending to government business is far too bloated and called for a leaner government.

He made the proposal on Sydney's Take on Multi TV in a discussion on how to make Ghana a better country.

The IMANI president and his vice Kofi Bentil prescribed a number of solutions to peculiar problems facing the economy and the country at large.

Franklin Cudjoe maintained there is the urgent need to merge a number of the ministries whilst still collapsing others, especially the Information Ministry.

He said in a bid to effectively deepen decentralization, all public sector agents, including District Chief Executives should not be employed from Accra, rather they should be elected by the constituents in the various Districts.

Mr Cudjoe stressed that, this will ensure that decision making is from bottom-up and would "give real power to the people."

He argued such a move will enhance community involvement and that is key to ensuring proper development and accountability to the people.

Kofi Bentil, on his part said about twenty-five percent of the workforce within the civil service are not productive and described the situation as "a welfare state, which has been disguised as a civil and public service for a number of decades."

He added that over the years people have been employed and paid for no work done and suggested that the country can cut cost and improve productivity by outsourcing up to fifty percent of the public and civil services.

With the current reports of mismanagement at the Korle-bu Teaching hospital Kofi Bentil is convinced that Korle – Bu Hospital can introduce a grading system of charging fees for various classes of people - the poor, intermediate and the high-earned.

This system, in his view, will ensure an effective administration of the hospital even if on government subvention.

 On the economy, Bentil proposed that the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, should be merged with the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) ‘to become the government’s strategic thinking arm, to think through long, medium and short-term plans, with the office of the exchequer doing budgeting and budget monitoring’.

He is strongly opposed to the Ministry of Finance doing economic planning, saying "there are too many grey areas and we have lost our way,"

On the discrepancies in the payroll system, IMANI revealed that government can outsource the duties of managing a payroll system to a more competent company to do a better job of administering the country's payroll.