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If government is really bent on creating more jobs in the country, it needs to focus its attention on the manufacturing sector.

This according to a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ernest Aryeetey, is because the sector has the potential of solving the frightening employment rate that has bedeviled the country.

The Ghana Labour Force Survey Report by the Ghana Statistical Service, projected Ghana’s current unemployment rate at 11.9%.

Professor Aryeetey, while speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, explained that there would be more job opportunities for most graduates if there is a comprehensive plan to improve the manufacturing sector. “My view tends to be that, we are interested in employment; you cannot afford to create these jobs by overlooking manufacturing.

So I will strongly advocate that we pay attention to the link between agriculture and manufacturing, and of course with services.” “Manufacturing is one that traditionally has created modern sector employment.

Manufacturing is what is going to absorb all the young men and women leaving your polytechnics and universities,” he said, adding that, “If we are not able to create jobs in Ghana today, it’s because our manufacturing has not performed well.”

Ghana not service driven economy The Professor, who is an economist, further dispelled claims that Ghana is gradually becoming a service driven economy. “I always argue that, Ghana has not followed the traditional pattern of progression.

Traditionally, you would have expected an economy that was dominated by Agriculture to move to manufacturing. That’s what economic history teaches us. As a result of changes in technology available to the world, driven largely by globalization, we’ve made a transition from agriculture into services, but let’s not deceive ourselves into calling the economy of Ghana a service driven economy, it is not. It is only partially so.”

Prof. Aryeetey would today [Monday], launch a book he co-authored with a British trained economist, Ravi Kanbur, titled: “The economy of Ghana; 60 years after independence.” Ravi Kanbur is a British trained economist and an international professor of applied economics and management.