Honu, Bright
Description
This thesis examines the background to development planning in Ghana,
and the interactions between sectors of the economy, with special reference
to the primary sectors. It makes use of the official input-output (1-0)
table to identify the type of interactions that existed within the
Ghanaian economy in 1968. Input-output analyses have been in use for
development planning and research for a long time, but very little use has
been made of the Ghanaian 1-0 table since it was published in...[Show more] October, 1973.
The findings of this paper are not to be regarded as final, but as
providing a basis for looking at major problems of the economy (e.g. low
incomes, high unemployment and growth as a whole) on a national basis
rather than from the viewpoint of industrial projects. As pointed out by
Chenery and Raduchel (1971), "to the extent that production requires inputs
in fairly fixed proportions, growth is likely to be impeded by shortage of
specific factors rather than by a general scarcity of resources."
"Planning models", they continued, "in developing countries have concentrated
mainly on avoiding bottlenecks in production by making better use
of scarce resources of capital and foreign exchange. Possibilities for
increasing total welfare through varying the composition of consumer demand
or through making greater use of surplus labour have been considered only
in the context of partial analyses of individual projects. The problem
of unemployment has acquired an increasing urgency in many developing
countries because of the neglect of labour absorption in most development
plans."
The first chapter is essentially an introduction dealing with the
measurement of economic performance and the various approaches to economic
development. Chapter two d e a ls with the historical background to economic development
planning in Ghana. It briefly compares aspects of the Ghanaian
economy with those of some other developing countries.
Chapter three introduces theoretical aspects of input-output analysis.
It briefly discusses the official Ghanaian 1-0 table , how it was compiled , and some of its deficiencies.
Chapter four makes use of the 1-0 approach to identify various link
age effects in the economy in 1968.
Chapter five is a concluding section which also incorporates suggestions
for improving the current Ghanaian 1-0 table for use in development
planning.
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