The Minister of the Interior, Dr Benjamin Kunbuor, has waded into the issue of Fulani herdsmen menace on the floor of Parliament and called on Ghanaians to be careful not to lump all Fulani citizens as criminals. He said it would be better for us to identify cattle herdsmen who were criminals and deal with them rather than consider all cattle herdsmen as Fu1ani who were perpetuating crimes since some of the Fulanis in the country were industrialists while others were engaged in other useful ventures. Dr Kunbuor was reacting to a comment by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Nkoranza North, Major Derek Oduro (retd) during a debate on the 2012 budget to the effect that the security apparatus were protecting foreigners who were perpetrating crimes at Agogo instead of protecting Ghanaians. Dr Kunbuor said investigations carried out had concluded that only 0.3 per cent of all cattle in the Agogo area belonged to Fulani herdsmen while they were taking care of a number of cattle for Ghanaians. Contributing to the debate later, the minister touched on capital gains tax and said it was gratifying that the government had identified that phenomenon and put in measures to tax the mining companies as a major source of revenue for the country. That, according to him, would make the mining companies good corporate citizens and called on Ghanaians to laud such a policy in the 2012 Budget. When he took his turn in the debate, a former Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and MP for Wenchi, Professor George Gyan-Baffour, stated .that the economy, under the present regime, was suffering from Kwashiorkor. He explained that the Finance Minister stated in the budget that in 2011 the economy grew by 13 per cent, adding that in doing so he “cleverly or in an attempt to obfuscate the situation, did not tell us that half of this growth was from oil production. So if you remove oil production from the 13.6 per cent growth rate, the economy grew only about 6.8 per cent”. Prof Gyang-Baffour said what the finance minister failed to tell Ghanaians was that non-oil economy, which had before the oil discovery, grew at only 6.8 per cent by the government's own admission, or shrank to 6.5 per cent as per estimates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He said under the NPP, the non-oil GDP, which was now shrinking, grew progressively from 3.7 per cent in 2000 to 4.2 in 2001, 4.5 in 2002, 5.2 in 2003, 5.6 in 2004, 5.9 in 2005, 6.4 in 2006, 6.3 in 2007 and 8.4 in 2008. Prof Gyang-Baffour explained that under the Mills’ administration, the economy shrank from 8.43 in 2008 to 4.0 in 2009, rose to 7.7 in 2010 and shrank again to 6.8 in 2011. “Madam Speaker, when the economy was injected with the oil, the belly bloated to 13.6 per cent in 2011 as the non-oil economy, representing the buttocks, caved in to 6.8 and the legs, representing the sectors and sub-sectors of the Kwashiorkor economy, shrank and wobbled,” he said.