Mr. John Kufuor has been in the news this week for purportedly suggesting that the country may not survive without aid.
“It is a matter of phasing. We are in a phase of development. We just do not get up and say no aid. They have exploited us enough so we take to empower ourselves, to build ourselves through education and through attracting investment, creating employment, so it gets to a point where now when they come, they meet their equals. So we have to be careful to say that now where we are, we will not go and ask for aid. We will do it, but only as a stage to empower us,” Kufuor stated.
But his office in a statement said the former president was misreported.
Special Aide to Mr. Kufuor, Dr.Kwabena Osei Adubofour in a Citi News interview said contrary to the news reports, the former president rather believes that policies being introduced by the Akufo-Addo government are pertinent to making the country attain what he calls the well thought-out vision of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’
“There has been some news item going around in the media that former President Kufuor has poopooed the Ghana beyond aid mantra that is being pursued by the current government and all we are saying is that, that is not what he said and he has been misrepresented and misquoted,” he added.
Adubofour in a statement further clarified that Mr. Kufuor’s comment rather was to the effect that the Ghana beyond aid agenda is “feasible and that the president can only be interpreted as having made a visionary call to pursue such pragmatic policies as would enable Ghana overcome aid-dependency as quickly as possible.”
“Such policies would include loans, aid, or foreign investments to undertake the requisite investments including industrialization and export development to accelerate our wealth creation at all levels. What is needed to be done, he said, is to negotiate well in win-win frameworks with a grasp of the geopolitics around us.”
The statement also said: “Indeed, we must be fair to ourselves as Ghanaians that ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ is the grand and achievable vision which we should seek to realize for the country. It doesn’t preclude us from using aid (loans included) to get there. Given the spread of the socio-economic and foreign policies which the government is currently pursuing, the call can be said to be already work in progress.”
Below is the full statement from office of John Kufuor:
Re: President Kufuor’s Alleged Comments on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’
The Office of Former President John Kufuor has come across several publications in the Ghanaian media alluding to the former president allegedly having cast aspersions on the current Ghanaian government’s ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda – the driving vision of its development agenda.
This office wants to make it clear that but for the ill-intention that appears to characterize these publications, they would not misconstrue his statement on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ as a visionary agenda made with a conviction that, with the right policies and programmes, Ghana would see itself beyond aid in the foreseeable future.
His statement was in reaction to a media-person’s doubts about the feasibility of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’ President Kufuor reacted that it was feasible and that the president can only be interpreted as having made a visionary call to pursue such pragmatic policies as would enable Ghana overcome aid-dependency as quickly as possible. Such policies would include
loans, aid, or foreign investments to undertake the requisite investments including industrialization and export development to accelerate our wealth creation at all levels. What is needed to be done, he said, is to negotiate well in win-win frameworks with a grasp of the geopolitics around us.
Indeed, we must be fair to ourselves as Ghanaians that ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ is the grand and achievable vision which we should seek to realize for the country. It doesn’t preclude us from using aid (loans included) to get there. Given the spread of the socio-economic and foreign policies which the government is currently pursuing, the call can be said to be already work in progress.
The former president wants all well-meaning and discerning people to cast their minds back to what the Marshal Plan of the United States did for West Germany after World War II. Germans utilized this aid from the US government under President Harry Truman to build their nation from the ashes of the war to create an economy which is the third largest in the world today. Of course, the German economy has, since the success of the Marshal Plan, graduated beyond aid a long time ago.
Such is what former President John Kufuor understands President Akufo-Addo wants the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ vision to achieve for our nation. And he has the full confidence that Ghana, under the able leadership of the current president, will ultimately get there.
Signed
Dr. Kwabena Osei-Adubofour
Senior Aide and Spokesman for President John Kufuor
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Source: Citinewsroom.com
