Director of Research at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Dr John Kwakye
Government needs to address challenges in the private sector, John Kwakye
YouStart to address unemployment in Ghana
Youth to become enterpreneurs
The issue of unemployment remains one of Ghana’s major problems and to help curb this menace, the Director of Research at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Dr John Kwakye, has advised government to support the private sector to grow.
According to him, it is impossible for government to single-handedly employ the teeming unemployed youth in the country, hence, the need to address the challenges in the private sector for them to support government with employment.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, November 23, John Kwakye said these youth, when enrolled in the private sector will be equipped with entrepreneurial skills.
It will also give room for them to establish their businesses and employ others as well.
“Officially, when they tell us that youth unemployment is about 12%. I ask myself, really? Is that what we see? youth unemployment is 12%, in other words, the youth who are employable, only 12% are unemployed. That is what it is saying. 88% are employed. Is that true?” he quizzed.
“Government has introduced various youth employment schemes and we have said that government alone cannot employ everybody especially on a more permanent basis or provide quality jobs so what government needs to do is to support the private sector to grow and create the jobs. They [the private sector] have introduced some schemes to train the youth to acquire skills and then also the capacity to establish their own enterprises,” Dr Kwakye.
John Kwakye, however, lauded government for introducing YouStart programme in the 2022 budget.
“…it’s good that government has introduced this programme called YouStart and they have also said that additionally, they are going to support the private sector by addressing the obstacles in the sector so that they can also help in the job creation. “
It would be recalled that Ken Ofori-Atta, during the 2022 budget presentation in parliament, on November 17, announced that government will create 1 million jobs through a programme dubbed ‘YouStart’.
According to him, ‘YouStart’ aims at providing young entrepreneurs access to capital, training, technical skills, and mentoring to enable them to operate their own businesses.
