THE TRADE AND INDUTRIALIZATION NEXUS: A PATHWAY TO GHANA’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
There cannot be a topic that is more germane at this time in our nation’s history than the identification of
the pathways available to us to lift ourselves from developing to developed status. The major economic
turbulence that we are currently experiencing, traceable to seismic internal and external pressures, suggests that the strategies pursued over the past 65 years have not created an economy with either the resilience to weather headwinds or the sophistication to respond to the usual policy interventions available to address crises.
Now more than ever, there is the urgent need to discuss the developmental levers at our disposal to transform the structure of our economy such that our nation gets on to a sustainable growth trajectory that will, not only move us firmly to developed status, but will also provide dampeners for extreme economic oscillations in the future. There are currently only 63 economies in the world classed as industrialized, making up less than 20% of the global population. Yet together they produce over half of the world’s manufactured goods with China alone churning out 30%.
In startling contrast, the 47 least developed countries (LDCs), which make up 14% of the world’s population, produce less than 1% of manufactured goods. Other developing countries do only a little better, together producing just 2%. These numbers suggest that there is significant potential for developing an industrial base in the developing world to serve the needs of the developing world.