Comparing the economies of Ghana and Finland

Informal Sector Economy may refer to those activities undertaken by people to earn a livelihood which in various ways are not necessarily controlled or regulated by any laid down procedures or rules. The exact opposite is the formal economy, which in many cases are highly regulated.

It is however worth noticing that there is no straight forward definition of what is formal or informal but certain characteristics like those mentioned above for instance provide some form of clue.

In Ghana, it is very obvious for anyone to see various forms of economic activities springing up in almost every corner of cities, towns and villages. That is to say that even though places are demarcated for specific uses like residential or civic and open spaces, some form of economic activities particularly selling and buying do go on everywhere. The case in Finland is quite the opposite where shops are highly regulated and have limited opening and closing hours as well as in specific departmental stores. There are instances in Finland where people sell some flee market good in the market places but that is not the same situation in Ghana - in the case of Ghana, even the products are brought to your doorsteps, while you are in a car (you could buy almost everything you can find in a shop on the streets) and in almost every corner. Thus street hawking is virtually absent in Finland while it abounds in Ghana. 

This also does not however mean that there are no forms of regulations in place concerning though as in some places one could see warnings like "NO STREET HAWKING" which are in most cases ignored.

My suggestion is that even though these activities are not regulated, regulating them can generate a lot of revenues for the government in Ghana because this sector alone employs about 80% of the Ghanaian population. This sector could form some strong unions which could be very influential and help provide a lot of benefits for its members like for example PAM in Finland. The difficulty about that though is that since this people's activities are not sustainable in most case, the possibility of forming a group or union today and it collapsing the following day is highly possible.

Amen