Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin, an economist at the University of Ghana, has lamented how expensive Ghana's democracy is.

He claims that the cost of maintaining the nation's operations prevents the funding of domestic development initiatives.

At the 11th Ghana Economic Forum, Professor Bokpin warned the government to be prudent with its spending while speaking to GhanaWeb.

"While we are thrilled about the huge potential to raise more money, we must also urge the government to be prudent with its spending since, in this nation, we have been so wasteful that the cost of operating our democracy has been so high.

“The cost of running our democracy in terms of the size of government and all of that is just too huge and at the end of the day, it leaves very little for where money has to go for growth to be engineered,” he intimated.

He also advised that a lean staff structure be adopted across all sectors of the economy.

“Beyond that, we must replicate that across state-owned enterprises. If you look at their staff strength which has gone up since 2017, we are creating deputy CEOs and all of that. This is the best time for Ghana to look at Ghana and say what is tolerable and what cannot be allowed,” he noted.