The Committee for Joint Action (CJA) has called on government to implement drastic measures to alleviate the rising cost of living for Ghanaians.
Pressure group, Committee for Joint Action (CJA), disclosed this in a press statement released on Tuesday.
The group cited the worsening global economic situation, the commission of economic and financial crime, including tax invasion and corruption in public institutions as the key factors attributing to the country’s weak economy.
Speaking on the Tuesday edition of Eyewitness News, a leading member of the Committee for Joint Action, Kwesi Pratt, affirmed the group’s pronouncements and noted that “the evidence is there for all to see. Petroleum prices have gone up over the last 2 years and they’ve up quite steeply, utility prices have gone up about 70%, the prices of sachet water have gone up over 15% with the last 12 months. So everybody knows that living condition is rising so there is no secret about it.”
However, Mr Pratt insisted that the current economic situation was not strange since countries all over the world were going through similar situations.
“Our economy exist on the periphery of the capitalist economy and therefore it has been said that where the economy of the metropolitan economy faces we on the periphery catches cold and indeed if you look at the world economy, the world economy is in massive recession and the U.S is struggling to come out of the recession.
“Italy is facing enormous problems even the British economy is struggling, the only economies thriving are the German and French economies but beyond that the whole global economy is suffering and because we exist on the periphery we also will suffer,” he said.
He further added that “we are not controlling our resources and we are not exploiting our resources to the benefit of our people if you take oil for example in the first year of exploitation all the people of Ghana through our government got US$ 440 million, COSMOS energy which is also one of the partners in the Jubilee field got $2billion if you look at gold the situation is even worse, we are also told that 6 million people are evitable to pay tax in Ghana out of that 6 million, only 2 million is paying tax so where are going to get the revenue from.”
He later recommended that, government will have to widen its tax net to ensure the country gains maximum returns on the exploitation of her resources and also introduce measures to fight corruption in the public sector.
