10 things to change for Ghana to succeed

1. Allow full local citizens’ freedom and empowerment- to elect their town council and Mayors, and District and Regional Chief Executives, to design their own budgets, including property identification with street name and house numbering and NATIONAL ID NUMBER for every citizen and Resident or Taxpayer, to facilitate database creation and planning.

2. Allow better citizenship participation in our democracy; all elected officials should have an open working phone, email and mail documentation systems to receive and record inputs from the public.

3. Ban Open Gutters and open defecation in Ghana, as a National law enforced by local governments and monitored by national officials.

4. Have all Ministries develop *performance monitoring indices* posted on their websites, eg-

- Ministry of Health - conditions of health care facilities and services;

- Ministry of Roads & Highways- monitoring for poor road conditions across the country, etc

5. The President should have more open communication with the people, instead of through surrogates or communication experts

6. All Ministries and Agencies should have their experts answer public questions on problems or challenges, not PR offices. For example, Chief Engineers of ECG and VRA and GRIDCO should answer questions.

7. Hold Chief executives of Public Agencies responsible for Defining Goals, Meeting schedules, Quality Performance and Service Delivery

8. Every Ministry and Public Agency must have Quarterly and Annual Public Reports and Meetings (as required of American corporations), and showing and justifying the service they deliver to the nation, and work towards improvement on performance matrices.

9. All MPs, Ministers, Public Official Executives should be paid a flat salary and no vehicles or petrol. 1 or 2 vehicles per 100 employees of an Agency or Ministry may be sufficient and managed by the Executive secretary with a log of maintenance and records.

10. To revive Ghana's Economy, Government should

A. reduce the cost of government through expense reduction to match revenue projections.

B. cut down all duties and Taxes on imported private and commercial vehicles to a flat 10% of original sales price.

This will encourage more import of second-hand vehicles in good condition from places like the USA and increase domestic middle-class car ownership. The loss in tax at the ports will be made up by annual registration fees.

Ghana should have training and licensing for all automobile repair technicians. This will create more professional technical skills and entrepreneurship. Renewal of licensing fees is also government revenue.

C. cut down VAT taxes to 9.5% The business people are known to invest extra cash into other investments, which will create more small businesses and jobs.

D. cut imports of items like corn and food that can be grown or made in Ghana, and stimulate domestic manufacturing by providing Small to Medium Business loans at less than ten (10) interest.

E. Reduce national lending and borrowing interest rates by stopping to issue Government Bonds and CDs above 5%, and

- regulate Bank margins to 5%, thus making borrowing in Ghana reasonable at or under 10%.

When taxes and cost of borrowing are drastically reduced, “ahokyere” and inflation rate will reduce, excess liquidity will help stimulate manufacturing and job creation, and the economy will start growing and stabilize.