Macro-economic stability is not enough

Accra, Feb. 19, GNA - Mr. Mats Karlson, World Bank (WB) Country Director, on Monday lauded Ghana for attaining sustainable macro-economic stability over the past few years, but said it was not enough since that had not yet led to job creation for the youth.

He said job creation was the only meeting point for the economic and social dimensions of any development agenda. "If all the good macro-economic indicators do not lead to job creation we cannot talk of development," he said.
Mr Karlson made the remarks at a day's High Level Consultative Meeting on Productive and Decent Work for the Youth in West Africa, with emphasis on the Mano River Union (MRU).
The meeting, which was under the auspices of UNIDO and the AU in collaboration with the UNDP, ILO and the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA), was to develop a set of action-oriented recommendations that would complement the effort at alleviating unemployment and poverty within the sub-region.
It would also focus on operationalising the recommendations of the UNOWA report on Youth Unemployment and Regional Insecurity in West Africa and examine past policy programme responses to the challenges that young people faced in West Africa.
At least 100 participants, drawn from governments, development partners, international organizations and the private sector attended the meeting.
Mr Karlson noted that the government of Ghana for instance had shown, over the past few years that it was committed to accelerated development by embarking on policies that had led to sustainable macro-economic stability, improvement of infrastructure and creation of an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.
"What is left for Ghana to do is to begin to embark on action programmes that would lead to movement of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) from the informal to the formal sector in order for there to be more permanent jobs for the youth.
"That way, both the economic and social dimensions of development would have been properly taken care of and then we can talk of economic development," he said.
He acknowledged that like all other developing countries, especially in West Africa, Ghana needed huge chunks of foreign and domestic investor capital to build on its macro-economic achievements. Mr Karlson, who is also the WB regional representative for West Africa, said it was imperative for African governments to demonstrate their commitment to their own development agenda in order to attract the big investment from foreign partners.
"The big money will come when African governments are seen to be doing what they set out to do in their own development plans," he said. He re-echoed Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's assertion that Liberia, like other countries in the sub-region, was not poor but largely mismanaged, saying that African governments needed to do a proper management of their economies to ensure a speedy realization of their development aspirations.
Touching on the on-going energy crisis in the country, Mr Karlson said the way to go was to adopt a regional approach to the energy problem of West Africa through an unwavering commitment to the West African Gas Pipeline Project.
Mr Alan Kyerematen, Minister of Trade, Industry and Presidential Special Initiatives (PSI), noted that even though 60 per cent of the West African populations were youth below the age of 20, as high as 50 per cent of the youth were either unemployed or underemployed.
He said that presented a grave problem for African governments and needed to be tackled vigorously through action-oriented programmes. "The several frameworks, concepts and models for development we have in Africa are not enough to improve the lot of our youth if we do not take concrete action to provide sustainable jobs," he said. "The youth, educated and skilled, are one of the vehicles for accelerated socio-economic transformation of our countries."
Mr. Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella, Director-General of UNIDO, said African states had over the years tried to manage poverty instead of embarking on poverty alleviation programmes. He said the danger was that poverty was always postponed and passed to subsequent generations.
"We cannot keep applauding ourselves for having successful programme implementation in our various countries if those programmes do not provide jobs for our youth," he said.