Emergency cabinet session on economy

According to the The Statesman newspaper, President Kufuor has called for an emergency Cabinet meeting today at 11:00am.

The single-agenda session today is to discuss the economy.

Sources close to the Castle told The Statesman that the President has been having a series of discussions with important stakeholders such as the Finance Minister, Governor of the Bank of Ghana and others on what can be done in the shortest possible time to alleviate the impact of rising crude oil prices and global food prices.

It was suggested in this paper Monday by our former editor-in-chief that government must seriously start considering some form of subsidisation to stop the opposition from exploiting rising prices to win this year's election by default.

Continuing this line on Metro TV yesterday, Asare Otchere-Darko went further to suggest that with the oil revenue expected to start 2010, the NPP should not shy away from 'mortgaging' some of the expected revenue to take care of the current crisis.

Once Ghana becomes an oil producing country, it can be expected to better handle a future crisis. Gabby said otherwise it would be a "disaster” to offer the NDC such an undeserving platform to come back to power, after mismanaging the economy up until 2000.