In recent times the debate in this country has been about whether prevailing economic factors signal a crisis or not.

I find it hard to believe why some will choose to debate this. For me, this goes beyond the half-empty or half-full rhetoric.

Since 2012, we have not had stable power supply, whereas within the same period, power costs have shot up astronomically. Yet we are told that our situation is better than others in the sub-region, hence we should not complain.

This year alone, we have seen fuel prices jump by as much 25 percent on the average. Then again, we are told we are better-off, hence should keep mute. We should just grin and bear it like nothing has happened. Of course, we are peace-loving people.

The local currency has not fared any better. It has reached record lows and is arguably the worst- performing currency in Africa and the world. What kind of currency depreciates by 20 percent in the first quarter alone, huh?

Everything looks so auto-piloted, making you wonder if we have a leader in this country.

The Central Bank’s measures to tame the cedi are arguably the shoddiest they could come up with: fighting fire with fire.

Now there’s more shortage of the greenback. And my basic economics tells me that scarcity of a commodity leads to a price hike.

Some say this is oversimplification, but I call it a common sense approach.

The cedi’s depreciation singlehandedly has had a telling effect on this economy more than anything else, mainly due to our reliance on imports.

Nevertheless, the BoG’s approach to the issue can best be described as wishy washy. Sad it is!

The current precarious situation of our economy points to a fact that we are heading for an apocalypse. Rising unemployment alone is enough to push us over the top. This may sound as an exaggeration, but where this country is headed calls for supernatural intervention.

Steps in the Senchi Consensus. Boy, our leaders like too much talking but little or no action. Personally, I see the National Economic Forum as a knee-jerk reaction which will not serve any useful purpose. It was hurriedly arranged with some of the participants lacking locus to make any meaningful contribution to a simple economic discourse.

That the forum wouldn’t come up with any new solution was known to the organisers and participants before they assembled at the luxurious Royal Senchi Resort, near Akosombo. We have never run out of ideas to tackle our issues. It is rather a deficit of will.

Didn’t government know when it was doling out monies to party cronies in the guise of judgement debts, GYEEDA, Subah, and SADA contracts that it would all backfire someday?

It’s said that the people behind these shady deals have not been punished. Usually, committees set up to investigate acts of malfeasance end up drinking tea and taking fat allowances. Their reports are always confined to the shelves. Ghanaians like me, as usual, will blow hot and cold during radio phone-ins and on other media platforms. When we get tired, we stop and we go back to life as it was before. 

Take, for instance,the case of Mayor of the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA), Captain Anthony Richard Cudjoe (Rtd), who is alleged to have swindled his own assembly. It is reported that he was given a travel allowance to attend a conference in Columbia, but he could not make it because he was denied a transit visa by the US embassy.

According to reports, rather than return the colossal GH¢30,000 allowance given him by the Assembly, he decided to bide his time at his Tema residence only to return to work after the said conference, purporting to have made the trip.

The Assembly uncovered the truth and guess what it did…It set up a committee to look into the issue. The committee’s terms of reference among others was to find out who gave the money to the Mayor, whether that person committed an illegality, blah blah blah. What nonsense!

And we are here talking about the essence of a National Economic Forum? If we expend our energies on such useless ventures, sorry to say, without us dealing with such dubious personalities parading themselves as political leaders, we aren’t going anywhere.

The committee set up to investigate the STMA boss will not amount to anything; it’s just simply a cover- up. What happened to similar committees set up to investigate corruption in the past does not give us faith in this new one. For every penny stolen from our national kitty, it translates into bad roads, lack of teaching materials for schools, sick people dying because hospitals have no standby generators, lack of potable water among others.

Where did we go wrong as a country? It is obvious this government is not fulfilling its side of the social contract it signed with Ghanaians. What they do best is tax, tax and tax more. Even that, they are not creative about it: taxing the same people over and over again.

We have to be serious as a people. Action, but not “talk talk” as demonstrated at Senchi, is what will get us to the Promised Land. We have the personnel needed to execute the job at hand. Let’s put them to action and not behind roundtables.

Someday Ghanaians may just decide they have had enough!

Let me cease fire.

I’m out.