Senior Minister-designate Yaw Osafo Marfo has said he does not believe in any development plan that exceeds 10 years, hence the 40-year National Development Plan proposed by the previous government was wrong.

According to him, exigencies of world economics do not support an idea of putting in a long term development plan that goes beyond 10 years, further stating that advanced economies no longer talk about long term plans that go beyond 10 years.

Speaking during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Friday January 20, he said: “I was involved in the discussion of the 40-yr development plan; in fact I was consulted and I made my views clear from day one that I did not believe in any plan in excess of 10 years because of exigencies of world economics and, therefore, I will prefer that we restrict ourselves to a 10-year development plan.

“Dr Nii Moi Thompson (Chair of the National Development Planning Commission) called me a couple of times to talk about this and I gave some specific notes of my mine particularly in the infrastructure side, but I haven’t seen the final outcome of the development plan although I have had some inputs into it relating to the blood of this system, which is power or energy.

They met a whole caucus in the NPP headquarters and I made my input clear [about] the 40-year development plan. The vice president (Dr Bawumia) and myself expressed our views on the length of time. Now that we (NPP) are in power we are really going to look at that programme, but as I said I made my view clearly that I did not believe in any plan beyond 10 years and I still stand by it.

“We will look at the 40-year development plan because it is important that every country has a plan particular in respect to infrastructure and where there is modification we will make it after thinking through. When you talk about planning in Germany, nobody talks about more than 10yrs.”