Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, says government is not well-placed to employ more people into the public sector.

He says that over 50 per cent of government’s total revenue is being used as salaries for public sector workers.

He is urging young people to focus on creating jobs for themselves and others as the government was determined to support small and middle-scale enterprises with its limited resources.

“A recent survey of the NABCO group identifies that 98.1% per cent of the young people want jobs in the public sector. We cannot support that, and that should not be encouraged either. Wages currently are estimated to be over 50% of our total revenues.

"This is wages for just 650,000people out of 30 million that we have to support and make sure that their future is good. If we were even to reduce wages to revenue by 10 per cent, that is about ¢5 to ¢6 billion, it will be used to support entrepreneurs and offer credit for you to become your own boss and create jobs for other people,” Ken Ofori-Atta said at Friday’s Springboard-Ghana Cares Youth Dialogue.

Graduate unemployment in Ghana is very high.

It is estimated that tertiary institutions in the country churn out about 110,000 youth annually.

However, just about 10 per cent of these graduates find jobs after their first year of completing school, according to a survey by the Institute of Statistics, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana.

Several interventions have been made by the government to salvage the situation.

In its 2021 budget, the Finance Ministry announced that the government had planned to create at least one million jobs within the next three years.

Mr Ofori-Atta, speaking at Friday’s event, mentioned that government was focused on becoming an entrepreneurial state.

“The future is not about jobs that are hiring 1,000 or so people, but it is really about you starting something new and hiring a few people because it’s the SME sector that really does it. Let’s recreate Ghana as an entrepreneurial state and not a socialist state.

The issue of becoming an entrepreneurial state must be pursued without relenting further and have confidence in the government that people have the skill set to have their own future in their hands,” he said.