Abstract
The development of infrastructural facilities in the form of transport and communications systems, energy, water supply, health and education is a necessary precondition for investment in directly productive activities such as agriculture and manufacturing. The importance of social and economic overhead capital was emphasised by Adam Smith, who argued that it was the duty of the state to erect and maintain
those public institutions and those public works which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain.1
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Notes and References
Computed from data on government expenditure on roads and water-ways, CBS, Quarterly Digest of Statistics (December 1966 and March 1984) and GDP (see Table A.1).
In the early 1980s, the share of government expenditure on education (both recurrent and development expenditure) was only 2 to 3 per cent. The corresponding figure in the mid-1960s was around 5 per cent. Figures computed from government expenditure on education (CBS, Quarterly Digest of Statistics December 1966, December 1969 and March 1984) and GDP (see Table A.1).
Computed from data shown in CBS, Quarterly Digest of Statistics December 1966 and Table A.1.
Computed from data on GDP (see Table A.1) and government expenditure on health (CBS, Quarterly Digest of Statistics December 1966 and March 1984). As a percentage of GNP government health expenditure in the mid-1970s went up to over 2 per cent (2.21 per cent in 1975–76). See Brooks (1981) p. 41.
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© 1989 M. M. Huq
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Huq, M.M. (1989). Infrastructure. In: The Economy of Ghana. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19749-1_4
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