The Minister of Environment, Science and Innovation, Professor Frimpong Boateng, has said that it will be very difficult for a country that has deeply been engulfed by corruption to succeed.
According to him, corruption holds the highest percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in most African economies, adding that if such issues are not tackled development would continue to be a mirage for most Africans.
“No nation develops with the level of corruption that we have in our part of the world. In Africa corruption accounts for about 40 to 75 percent of the GDP; that means the corruption industry is the biggest industry in Africa,” he said at ’s Innovation Summit held on Saturday.
Prof. Boateng, who was speaking on the topic “Creating Our Future”, also used the opportunity to call on the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to increase the 0.025 percentage of GDP allocated to research in the Ghana to one percent.
He said more resources will help address the country’s challenges.
“To do the things that we want to do in research, we need money and as at now, the money that is given for research is just about 0.025 percent of our GDP. And that is not enough to pay the scientists much more to undertake research. The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said that he will start by devoting one percent of GDP into research and that is a very good news indeed. And he put me at the ministry to do things for him; I’m serving at his pleasure. So I will remind him all the time of his promise to enable me function as a scientist and a doctor in that respect,” he added.
Ghana according to Financial Analyst, Sydney Casley Hayford. might have lost about GHc40 billion over the years through corruption.
Mr. Casley-Hayford indicated that, a “mid time calculation starting from 2008 to 2014 estimated that about 45 to 50 billion cedis had been taken by individuals [from the state].”
A number of corruption scandals have been recorded in the country in recent years which involved public officials and private companies benefiting from state monies for less or no work done.
Some of these scandals include the monies lost to Subah Info Solutions deal, the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency (GYEEDA, the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) and the GHc3.6 million bus branding saga.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
