Minority Leader in Parliament and Member of Parliament for Effutu, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has criticised the Mahama administration’s 24-hour economy policy, describing it as “more of a campaign slogan than a policy.”
Speaking on The Point of View on Channel One TV , Afenyo-Markin questioned the reasoning behind the government’s push to establish a 24-hour economy authority through a new Bill.
“This so-called 24-hour economy, I think they themselves understood it more as a campaign slogan than a policy. From all that is happening, I saw the Bill, they brought it and passed it, that they were creating a 24-hour authority. Another bureaucracy? I’m sorry. What do you need a Bill for? If the initiative is to create jobs, you look at the private sector, not government institutions,” he said.
He urged the government to prioritise strengthening existing economic initiatives instead of creating new bureaucracies. Afenyo-Markin suggested that the Trade Ministry could have leveraged former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s One-District-One-Factory (1D1F) programme to stimulate private sector growth.
“You have the Trade Ministry, what they should have done was to continue former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s One-District-One Factory, a very super economic policy for the private sector. You relax taxation on imports, specifically for the private sector. They could have reviewed the One-District-One-Factory and continued the rollout. There’s so much uncertainty in the private sector,” he added.
He stressed that easing import taxes and revisiting the 1D1F initiative would have been more effective in creating jobs and supporting businesses, pointing to the current uncertainty within the private sector that requires practical policy guidance.
