Middle income is just a label - Prof Adei

Although Ghana is touted as a middle-income country, every other statistic points to a country of lower-income standing, Prof. Stephen Adei, former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), has said.

Speaking at the maiden Ghanaman lecture in Accra organised by CeDI-Africa, a non-profit, Prof. Adei said if the country had sustained income per head growth of 5% per annum in dollar terms since independence, nominal GDP today would be around US$6,000 per head, instead of the actual figure of US$1,600.

His lecture sought to address the question of whether at 56, Ghanaians are really capable of managing their own affairs as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had claimed.

“Today Ghana is a middle-income country with low-income characteristics: inflation of more than 10%; fiscal deficit of 12% of GDP; external debt at 47% of GDP; international reserves of less than three months import cover; interest rates over 30%; roads, railways and ports of third-world levels; power, water and sanitation of a lower-income country; and serious deficits in housing, education, and health to name a few,” he said.

Even the country’s life expectancy of 58-years, he said, is that of a third-world country.

In terms of global competitiveness, he said it is “terrible” that Ghana ranks 114 out of 142 countries in the Global Competitiveness Report, “because we have problems with financing, corruption, infrastructure, bureaucracy, restrictive labour regulation, inefficient public service, inadequate educated workforce, economic policy instability and unemployment.”

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in November 2010 announced that the country had attained the middle-income status, revising GDP by 60% more than earlier estimated.

The World Bank backed up the claim in 2011, saying the country had moved from a low-income to a “lower middle-income” status based on its measure that lower middle-income economies had average incomes of US$1,006 to US$3,975.

The bank included Ghana among six new entrants -- Fiji, Lao PDR, Mauritania, Solomon Islands and Zambia -- on its classification indicator.

Prof. Adei, who is a development economist, said the country should quit being excited over its middle-income status and pay attention to addressing the challenges on the ground.

“In fact, the real measure of our performance in the 56 years [of independence] is that we will not meet half of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.”

The Professor of Economics and Leadership at the Pentecost University College said he has no doubt whatsoever that Ghanaians are capable of managing their own affairs, except that they have “so far done a poor job at it, and we must do things differently in the future.”

He placed the country’s woes squarely at the doorsteps of leadership, agreeing with Myles Munroe that, “whenever a nation has a lack of quality, legitimate and just leaders, national deterioration occurs”.

One area where he felt so much national deterioration has occurred is cultural transformation, which he warned does not mean bare-chested men and women dancing to centuries-old tunes.

“Our leaders have woefully failed in cultural transformation of Ghana. If they perform well, we will see gargantuan improvements in our national fortunes with the same resources,” he said.

“As a development economist, my concern is with the beliefs, norms and actions, which so much impact economic activities -- such as work ethic, productivity, high marginal propensity to consume, poor savings habits, excessive conviviality, love for ascribed titles rather than achievements...[and] witchcraft and luck, as major determinants of fortune,” he added.

Prof. Adei, a man credited with turning around the fortunes of GIMPA and making it the most successful organisation under Government’s Public Sector Reform Programme, said excessive partisanship has curtailed deployment of the country’s best human resources for its transformation.

“The management of the country by mediocre, often corrupt and incompetent, party ideologues is what we must address,” he said.