Single Spine is the Problem

Running an economy is a balancing act so any injection must ensure that the system have enough room to accommodate it or an outlet have been created for it. When salaries and wages rise faster than productivity, inflation is the natural consequence. As workers get more money than they are producing as happened in spain, italy, portugal etc. On the other hand when productivity rises faster than salaries and wages, stagflation is the result. As workers cannot buy what the produce as happened to germany. Except in they case of germany what cannot be bought was exported. Ghana and Germany are sitting on opposite ends of the economic spectrum. The Single Spine Salary Structure (SSS) in Ghana has doubled and in some cases tripled the salary of some public sector workers without commensurate increase in productivity. At The same time The government embarked on massive expenditures mostly for political reasons which pushed even more money into The economy. While the germans were exporting their surplus, Ghana was/is importing to make up for the rising demand occassioned by the steep rises in incomes(disposable income) Just at the same time that our imports surged the prices of our major exports mainly cocoa and gold went down. So More dollars (foreign currency) were flowing out than flowing in. As if that was not bad enough ghana's economy was rebased making us a middle income country overnight, therefore other grants from development partners that could have helped also dried up overnight. Also 8 months of litigation over presidency, The GEEDA and Woyome saga's have not given The donor Community the confidence they needed. With fewer and fewer dollars remaining in ghana the price of the dollar will also keep rising as a result of higher and higher demand and lower and lower supply. The turbulences that the ghanaian economy is facing is therefore to a larger extent self inflicted. From where I sit it is more political than economic. And both the NDC and NPP are guilty considering the fact that both sides used the SSS for political gains. Although some other factors have been mentioned here as contributing to the imbalance in the ghanaian economy namely other government expenditure, lower commodity prices, lower inflow of grants, the SSS is the most important straw the broke the camels back. Having diagnosed The Problem I will offer my treatment. Which is rollback of the SSS. I know This politically not feasible. But it is the only quick and fast remedy to the Problem. There are several ways of treating tumors, prayer, drugs etc but the most effective means is the surgical removal and it is also the most painful. A word to the wise is enough.