He said the system where people occupying political and public leadership positions were given juicy incentives including accommodation and cars should be scraped to protect the public purse.

He suggested that like any other ordinary worker who take loans to build their own houses and buy cars, politicians and institutional heads with these fringe benefits should be made to take loans to buy those luxuries themselves and not be depending on the state to provide them these incentives aside their “fat salaries”.

Prof. Mawuko-Yevugah, who delivered a lecture dubbed, "COVID-19 Pandemic, Russia-Ukraine War and Ghana’s Economic Crisis," at the Ghana Institute of Management Administration (GIMPA) last Thursday in Accra, questioned the justification of politicians and chief executive officers of parastatals being given free accommodations, cars and other incentives they could afford from their salaries.

Drain on economy

This was a major drain on the economy, he noted, calling for something to be done to change the status quo of providing such incentives.

“We agree with President Akufo-Addo when he said recently, that ‘the international financial structure is skewed significantly against developing and emerging economies like Ghana’.

But while we support his call for reform of the global governance architecture, we strongly believe that it is about time Ghana and other African countries took the bull by the horn by taking their destinies into their own hands”, he said.

Prof. Mawuko-Yevugah said the country needed cost saving measures including removal of perks and other burdens on the public purse to keep expenditures in check and save money to fund development infrastructure.

He noted that major socio-economic interventions that would support the economic conditions of Ghanaians were not being attended to due to lack of resources.

Prof. Mawuko-Yevugah noted that the time had come for the government to do something drastic about the bloated government size and save the country from the economic hardship emanating from the COVID- 19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.

Observing that the sense of governing in the country has become huge, Prof. Mawuko-Yevugah questioned “Why parastatals such as the Forestry Commission, Aviation, National Lottery should have CEOs and two Deputy CEOs when they belong to a ministry already and that ministry has a minister and two deputies?”

The country, he said, could be liberated from these excesses if there were expenditure controls including stringent public financial management system.

Complete overhauling

The impacts of the pandemic and Russia-Ukraine War, he said had exposed the weak foundations of fragile economies and their vulnerabilities to the vicissitudes of the global economy.

The Ghanaian economy crisis, he said, had manifested in rising inflation, rising budget deficits, ballooning and unsustainable debts levels, precipitous depreciation and fall in the value of the local currency (the cedi) relative to the major foreign currencies.

The lecture was organised by Think Progress Ghana in collaboration with the Graduate Students' Association of Ghana and GIMPA.