The Minister of Environment, Science and Innovation, Professor Frimpong Boateng has lamented the allocation of 0.025% of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to his ministry for research purposes.
According to him, more is needed in the government’s quest in addressing the country’s challenges through research and innovation.
[contextly_sidebar id=”mmm1UxRocF2WDNaLSv2x5uxsbrfLbgwd”]“To do the things that we want to do in research, we need money and as at now, the money that is given for research is just about 0.025 percent of our GDP. And that is not enough to pay the scientist much more to undertake research.”
Speaking at Citi FM’s Innovation Summit on Saturday, Prof. Frimpong Boateng also called on the President to fulfill his promise of assigning one percent of GDP to his sector.
“…The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said that he will start by devoting one percent of GDP into research and that is very good news indeed. And he put me at the ministry to do things for him; I’m serving at his pleasure. So I will remind him all the time of his promise to enable me function as a scientist and a doctor in that respect,” he added.
Prof. Frimpong also noted that when his ministry is allocated with enough resources then “we can serve all the research institutions in Ghana and make sure that we have the funds to do what we want to do.”
Meanwhile, some participants at the Innovation Summit were not happy for the 0.025 percent allocation to research describing it as paltry.
According to them, even the one percent the President promised is also too small charging government to increase it to encourage more people to undertake research and innovation.
The theme for the 2017 edition is “Creating Our Future”.
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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin