Ghana’s Finance Minister told graduating students at the University of Professional Studies – UPSA that government’s payroll is full and their they must consider venturing into entrepreneurship.
But Prof. John Gatsi, Dean of the University of Cape Coast disagrees saying “the public sector is not actually choked, it is rather the inability of the government to raise the required revenue to employ”
“The truth is that a proper analysis of the public sector spaces will reveal thousands of spaces in health, education, police service, immigration, agriculture extension services, district and municipal assemblies just to mention a few for Ghanaians. So the public sector is not actually choked, it is rather the inability of the government to raise the required revenue to employ.” – He said
According to him in an article “Entrepreneurship verses public sector employment for the youth”, he said “Jobs that require ten people to do cannot be done effectively by two people. This is why we have widespread productivity deficit.” adding that “Another serious issue is a well managed economy should be creating continuous economic opportunities for all the levels of the country’s demography.”
Touching on the fundamental issues he said “When we accepted the concept of jobless growth without doing anything about it, how do we expect the economy to give us the jobs? The economy is about livelihood and livelihood is glued to jobs. Speaking away an important product of economic management is a frustrating news to the youth. The reality is over 97% of these graduates remain jobseekers and with the 3% that may involve in entrepreneurial trials 2% May survive over a 5year period and 1% will grow to become giants. Thus, we need to support entrepreneurial success and survival with good access to cheaper fuel, cheaper energy, low and competitive interest rates, reliable marketing architecture, availability of startup funds to support entrepreneurship at the early stages and Investment in business incubators with serious staffing and equipment in well mapped out towns. It is important to recognize that vocational and skills training creates entrepreneurs faster with lasting impact.”
He empathized that government itself cannot be talking about entrepreneurship when is is not entrepreneurial itself questioning the number of jobs Komenda Sugar factory could have created if the factory was operational.
“What is the level of entrepreneurship by government? What is the level of innovation by government when it comes to activating the Kommenda sugar factory?
Some estimates show within 10 years Ghana imported more than US$4billion worth of sugar. An innovative government should have ensured critical entrepreneurial activity to provide jobs and produce sugar.
Let the government be entrepreneurial, let the government provide the entrepreneurial environment and let our young ones take advantage of any new investment to help entrepreneurship thrive in Ghana.
We spend billions importing rice to Ghana but our locally produced rice is priced higher than foreign ones. So where is the entrepreneurship?
Supporting some selected businesses in election year with some financial resources with no tangible results to show is not the way to go. “