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Editorial News of Tuesday, 16 January 2001

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Tips for NPP

An Associate Professor of Economics at the American University, Washington DC, Prof. George B.N. Ayittey has enumerated a number of measures that the new government needs to take to bring the economy out of the woods, according to a report carried by the Statesman.

He said to "strengthen the cedi and pull ourselves out of our economic miasma, we must focus on production; trimming government expenditure, and eliminating the unnecessary demands for foreign exchange such as paying for the education of the wards of senior government officials abroad, when we have universities and hospitals in Ghana."

Prof. Ayittey who made the suggestions at a press conference in Accra on the task ahead for the new government, noted that Ghana's economy is in a coma and needs urgent rescue.

He said as a deliberate policy to stifle local investors who did not identify with it, the past government created a hostile environment for them, leading to the collapse of several industries. "The key to economic growth, now is investment, both domestic and foreign. But foreign investors have not found Ghana, or Africa for that matter, an attractive place to invest because an enabling environment does not exist," he stressed.