After President John Dramani Mahama announced the formation of a Presidential Advisory Group on the Economy (PAGE) with a wide range of mandates, ranking member on the Economy and Development Committee of Parliament, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, believes the new advisory group is not very different from the past Economic Management Teams (EMTs).
The Member of Parliament for Ofoase Ayirebi says the newly unveiled PAGE looks familiar with EMT, and perhaps the difference just exists in the name.
Speaking to The High Street Journal, the Ofoase Ayirebi MP acknowledged that the composition of PAGE mirrors similar high-level economic bodies that past governments have assembled in the past.
He believes there is nothing new about seasoned economists, private-sector leaders, and respected public figures being brought together to advise the President.
Same Structure, Same Limitation
Oppong Nkrumah argues that PAGE, much like the Economic Management Teams (EMTs) of previous administrations, is fundamentally an advisory body without the technical backbone needed to coordinate policy across government.
For him, it is just another forum where ideas are exchanged and suggestions are made. However, the president or the cabinet is not compelled to adopt or implement those ideas and suggestions made.
“I think that the composition is fairly similar to similar bodies that we put together in the past. It’s just like any other committee at the top where people are sharing their views. The only difference between this and EMT may be in name, but in essence both of them will advise the president and the president will take the final decision, so it will still be sort of like a sub-advisory body that advises the president and cabinet,” he told The High Street Journal.
The Missing Piece: Technical Coordination & Institutional Support
At the core of Oppong Nkrumah’s critique is what he calls a missing technical support system. He believes that in the absence of institutional support, the group will become another forum for just sharing ideas while the hard work of knitting policies together is left undone.
According to him, effective economic governance is not just about having brilliant minds around the table. It is about having a dedicated, institutionalised technical team beneath them, one that models scenarios, tests policy trade-offs, and shows how decisions in one sector affect outcomes in another.
Without that, he warns, policy remains fragmented.
“For me, it’s lacking a critical component, that is, as in a technical support system that is broad-based and will therefore give some more institutional support to the persons who are around the table,” he critiqued.
Without such a support framework, he fears that fiscal decisions may clash with monetary objectives. Industrial policies may ignore energy constraints. Debt strategies may overlook growth implications.
PAGE, as currently structured, does not fill the proper economic coordination gap existing in the country’s economic governance.
Why This Matters
Oppong Nkrumah has long argued that Ghana needs a law-backed economic coordination framework, not just advisory committees whose influence depends on presidential preference. In his view, until policy coordination is institutionalised and supported by strong technical capacity, advisory groups, no matter how distinguished, will struggle to deliver lasting results.
PAGE, he is convinced, does not fundamentally change how economic decisions are made or coordinated. It does not replace the need for a permanent, technically grounded system that connects the dots across ministries and agencies.
“This is not very different from the EMT arrangement or from previous arrangements, but policy coordination is the technical part that puts the various pieces of the economic puzzle together, that is a technical part that must sit under this committee and model how different scenarios reflect different outcomes, so that this committee can, as it were, take decisions that the president was signing off on. In the absence of that, then it is missing that technical coordination part, which is what I’ve been speaking about,” he stressed.
