why is ghana a mixed but capitalist oriented enomic system?

Question

ghana is a mixed economic system and the private sector is classified as the engine of economic growth since 2000. most state funds are been used to import machines and other raw materials for industrial operations. again, all export goods are mostly produced by the individual firms or business entities. the major export product are gold, bauxite, cocoa, timber etc.

Answer 1

Ghana had a visionary President in the 1990s, name Rawlings or something like that, who decided to follow the pro-market model of development previously pursued successfully by developing countries in S Europe (e.g. Portugal) and E Asia (e.g. Malaysia). Instead of the statist model widely tried in Africa. The IMF and World Bank, with US Treasury enthusiasm behind them, lent Ghana a relatively large amount of money to help them get started down this track. The objective is to have faster economic growth towards prosperity in this century than in the 20th and to set a fine example to the rest of Africa and disprove the notion that "this is Africa, it cannot work here".

Answer 2

Well for starters there are three broad types of economic systems.
1. market economy
2. command economy
3. mixed economy

A market economy prices are free of controls and private ownerships is predominant.
A command economy, prices there are set by the government, assets are owned by the state and private ownership is generally restricted.
A mixed economy is (you guessed it) a mixture of both. It has elements of both a market economy and a command economy.

As a side note, its a mistaken view to think that US and western nations are purely market based. This is a false belief, they are mixed (since governments there own some state enterprises). There are no purely market or command economies, its all mixed.

Finally in response to your question, I'm not familiar with the economic indicators of Ghana but if its a mixed economy this simply means some assets there are government controlled and some are controlled by individuals. From the data that you provided, it seems that while Ghana is moving towards capitalism, it can still classified as a mixed economy because of a larger then normal state ownership of assets and businesses. in Ghana. In sense you can be capitalist but still have a mixed economy, however you CANNOT have purely market or command ones.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Hi, just wanted to mention, I liked this discussion. inspiring replies

Answer 4

Would like to know this too