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6.
Shared Vision and Commitment to Strategy Processes
1. The
key stakeholders that need to have a common and shared vision regarding
the national strategy process are:
- the government,
comprising the executive, legislature, judiciary, Ministries, Departments
and Agencies (MDAs) and local authorities)
- political parties
- private sector
- workers associations
- civil society,
including traditional authorities, civil groups and the general citizenry
2. An
aspect of participation that deserves special mention was the failure
to involve political parties in the decision to formulate the NDPF (Vision
2020). Having regard to the time frame covered by Vision 2020, the political
parties should have been involved in decisions on the methodology, processes
and participation of stakeholders involved. Although political parties
were not in existence in Ghana at the time the NDPF was being formulated,
efforts should have been made at the earliest opportunity to seek their
views and concurrence on these preliminary issues.
3. The
Ghana-Vision 2020 was regarded within certain political circles as the
response of a particular government to the constitutional imperative to
produce a coordinated social and economic policy framework for development.
Consequently, other political parties have not demonstrated an affinity
for the Ghana-Vision 2020 as a national vision. Nonetheless, political
parties participated in various stakeholder for a on the economic policy
framework for the First Step of the Ghana-Vision 2020, culminating in
their involvement in the National Economic Forum during which consensus
was reached on several areas of national economic policy.
4. In
general, due to the relatively limited visioning process and inadequate
broad-based stakeholder participation underlying the development of the
National Development Policy Framework (NDPF) that subsequently became
the Ghana-Vision 2020, the nature of political commitment to the Vision
was more partisan than broad-based, as political party ownership of the
Vision was not broad-based. After the change of government this year,
there was an initial period of uncertainty regarding how the new government
was going to treat the Vision 2020 and the 2000-2005 Policy Framework.
The government has now categorically stated that it has rejected the Vision
2020 goal of achieving a middle-income nation status by the year 2020
as a long-term target of national development. It has also rejected the
policy framework underlying the Vision. In its place, the new government
seeks to develop Ghana into an agro-industry based economy by the year
2015 and is in the process of fashioning the economic framework to enable
the nation achieve this new goal. Consequently, the specifics of the new
economic policy framework are yet to be made public.
5. Regarding
the nation at large, it appeared that the majority of the citizenry were
aware that there is something called Vision 2020 that provided a long-term
goal of achieving a middle-income status by the year 2020. However, they
did not know the contents of the Vision nor what it took to achieve it.
6. MDAs
and local authorities made efforts to derive the raison d’etre and policies
of their development planning efforts from the Ghana-Vision 2020 First
Step. This showed some degree of commitment by the administrative arm
of government to the Vision.
7. However,
the NDPF was not very much in the public domain. Hence, most people refered
to the First Step as Vision 2020.
8. The
private sector exhibits a yearning for long-term growth and the need to
fashion a common national front to achieve broad-based sustainable growth.
This is evidenced from their participation in various institutional arrangements
on consensual policy formulation. These originated from the days of the
Private Sector Consultative Group, through the formation of the Private
Enterprise Foundation, involvement of the private sector in government
investment promotion trips overseas, to the participation of the private
sector in more than eight workshops, conferences and forums since 1994,
including the recent National Economic Dialogue.
9. Six
of the latter are noteworthy as they focused on building consensus on
important economic issues facing the country, especially addressing inflation
and re-gaining macroeconomic stability through government and private
sector (and other stakeholder) dialogues. These were:
- Inflation Management
Workshop in May 1996 at Akosombo (with participants including political
parties, labour and opinion leaders)
- National Forum
on the State of the Economy, organized by the Tripartite Committee (Government,
Ghana Employers Association (GEA) and the Trade Union Congress) at the
end of May 1996 at Akosombo
- Forum for Policy
Dialogue: Towards a Re-Energized Partnership for Rapid Economic Growth,
organized by the PEF in March 1977 at Akosombo
- Conference on Ghana
Reaching the Next Level through Global Competitiveness: A Public-Private
Partnership, promoted by the PEF in June 1977 at Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, USA.
- The National Economic
Forum at the Accra International Conference Centre in September 1997.
- The National Economic
Dialogue at the Accra International Conference Centre in May 2001.
10.
Private sector participation in these forums reflects a desire for a compact
or social agreement among development partners on how to move the economy
forward. Despite these numerous efforts at deriving consensual policy
on the growth of the economy, the private sector feels that agreed outcomes
at these forums are not being effectively implemented as the environment
for private sector growth remains weak.
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