Ghana has been exporting jobs outside through its inordinate taste for foreign goods and services, Mr Ladi Nylander, a leading member of the Progressive People’s Party, has said.

According to him, the overreliance on foreign goods and services by Ghanaians has contributed to the viability of economies of countries such as China and Malaysia to the detriment of indigenous companies.

Speaking on the Executive Breakfast Show on Class91.3FM hosted by Prince Minkah, Mr Nylander said: “The most important aspect of any business is the market, the customer. You can have the smartest technological product, but if nobody wants to use it, then forget it. Every product must have a market and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) says that we will use the resources of state… Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom [flagbearer of the PPP] once said that if he becomes the president and let’s say there is a reception, everything that will go into it…will be from Ghana, whether it’s palm wine or plantain chips. That way you are empowering everybody. …These days all kinds of goods are coming from China, in other words we are exporting employment to people in China, to people in Malaysia because we are importing their goods which Ghanaians could do.”

Touching on job creation and unemployment, the former chairman of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) said education in Ghana must be geared towards job creation in order to minimise the rate of unemployment in the country.

According to him, the unemployment situation in Ghana could largely be attributed to the mismatch between training in schools across the country and the job market, a trend which, he said, must be changed through a more purposeful system.

“First of all the education is a mismatch. People must be educated to serve a certain purpose. Education by itself sometimes is good…but education also must serve a purpose, and if our population is to be trained such that they can help society create jobs…then the training must be geared towards there,” he said.

In Mr Nylander’s view, government policies in the education sector must also be shaped toward that end.

“Not only the training but the government policies. What is the vision? People will talk about what is in Singapore or Korea where the government actually has incubation or incubatory practices or they create the environment that start-ups, people that have the skills being trained technically can be given some amount of push.”