Technology has been identified as a crucial ingredient for the development of Ghana's small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Prof. Kofi Nketsia Afful, Economics Lecturer and member of the National Development Commission (NDPC) who made the observation in an interview with the B&FT said there is no hope for a structural transformation, what is known as development, unless every aspect of life of the nation is subjugated to technology. "For Ghana to develop, technology must become the driving force for entertainment, education, culture, agriculture, industry and services. For our SMEs to become real growth and on the more important note development poles for the nation, they must begin to mainstream technology at all levels of their operations, such as production, processing, management, selling, and debt collection and so on. "Interestingly, between 1911 and now many countries, particularly those in the South, South East and East Asia have transformed their economies from less developed countries to advanced industrialized, newly industrializing and near-newly industrializing economies. None of these countries in the 1950s was at the level of Ghana's promise of development," he noted. Prof. Afful pointed out that the point of departure for these economies was their wisdom to make technology the driving force of every aspect of their lives. He cited the US economy where research supports that 87.5 percent of increase in output per person is attributable to technical change and between 67 and 90 percent of increase in the rate of output per person is accounted for by advancement in knowledge. To this end, Prof. Afful said just increasing the conventional factors of labour and capital for industry in Ghana will not take the economy anywhere but the enhancement of the labour and capital with technology so industry can experience higher output per labour or higher output per capital. For him, the reason why the wage burden on government budget has not improved over the years such that almost 70 percent of the national budget is used to pay salaries and wages is because the country has not made use of technology to transform productive activity. "Supposing the present informal economy were transformed to the state of the present formal sector, the impact on revenue alone would be more than doubling of government tax revenue," he explained. The Prof. showed aversion to the overconcentration of economic managers on inflation, interest rates, exchange rates and balance of payment at the neglect of primary units of the economy such as production, specialization, division of labour, scientific research and technology which hold key to the transformation and growth of the economy. He called for drastic changes in the national academic curricular to include topics in technology, the economics of technology and the management of technology from kindergarten to tertiary levels in such a way that technology, its development and use becomes part and parcel of the daily life of the ordinary Ghanaian. He asserted that past development plans have not developed the country because the assigners of these plans left out the key component of technology. "This however was because the academic curricular and accompanying textbooks did not teach us about the essence of technology and how to mainstream technology in our developmental agenda," he noted. He challenged industry to play its part by supporting research and development and link up with tertiary institutions to develop new technologies and new products for the market. Source: B&FT