Political parties must be development-oriented
The Chief Executive of Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mr Alhassan Andani, has urged political parties in the country to constitute themselves into development-oriented organisations.
He said the job of political parties should be simple to bring development to citizens adding “when we hear political parties are not development-oriented, it can be troubling” he noted.
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Speaking at the Graphic Business/Stanbic Bank breakfast meeting in Accra yesterday, he noted, “political parties are supposed to be seeking a job and the job is very simple: to bring development.”
He said it was also the responsibility of citizens who gave the job to political parties to ensure that their decisions were based on development-oriented programmes to be prosecuted by the political parties.
“We should give them the job based on their ability to prosecute a development agenda,” he said.
Breakfast meeting
The Graphic Business/Stanbic Bank breakfast meeting brought together economists, captains of industry, experts and policymakers to discuss how the nation could learn lessons from the past to ensure fiscal stability in 2020, which is an election year.
The breakfast meeting, which was on the theme: “Election cycles, democratic governance and fiscal stability,” brought together speakers such as the Associate Professor, Department of Economics of the University of Ghana, Professor Eric Osei-Assibey, the Senior Advisor at the
Ministry of Planning, Dr Kojo Mensa Abrampah and the Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Governance, Dr Emmanuel Akwetey.
Firm decision
The Editor of the Graphic Business, Mr Theophilus Yartey, in his welcome address noted that during election years, successive governments created some negative situations which eroded all the gains that had been made in the previous years.
He said it was ,therefore, necessary to have discussions on how fiscal stability could be maintained in an election year.
“We agree with our partners that there is a budget coming on in November and this is the best time to have a discussion on fiscal stability to help to take a firm decision which will also serve as an input into the 2020 budget,” he said.
He said the breakfast meeting platform was created to share ideas and help make recommendations to reform policy.
“The Graphic Business is all about setting the business agenda and this time around, we thought that we should look at election year cycle, fiscal stability and good governance.”
“This is because 2020 is an election year, and every time in an election year, we undo all the good things we have done over the years which set us back,” he noted.
