I am beginning to think that the Akufo-Addo Administration could have gone about its recent decision to “seriously” and “formally” engage economic experts and lenders from the Washington, DC-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a more meaningful and constructive manner, by letting the general Ghanaian public in on the fact that as a bona fide country member of this post-World War II-founded economic recovery financial and banking establishment, with offices and staff in nearly all of its member countries around the world, Ghana has been incessantly engaging and soliciting the advisory services and the financial assistance of The Fund, as it is colloquially known, ever since the country signed onto membership of the same.
You see, listening to both President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his Finance Minister, Mr. Kenneth K. Ofori-Atta, publicly wax hostile about the imperative need for the country to stay fiscally afloat and as far away as possible from the putative nation-wrecking operatives of The Fund, at least as far as Continental African Countries and economies are concerned, one got the erroneous impression that, somehow, except for when it came to formally and/or officially soliciting fiscal and financial assistance or support from The Fund, the Government has had absolutely no direct contact or dealings with the operatives and technocrats at the International Monetary Fund.
This may, indeed, be what Nana Akomea, the Managing-Director of the State Transport Corporation (STC) and former Information Minister in the John Agyekum-Kufuor government, sought to convey and highlight in a recent debate with Mr. Kwesi Pratt, Jr., the staunch National Democratic Congress’ sympathizer and, some of his critics even claim, propagandist of the aforementioned political party establishment, on the Kwami Sefa Kayi-hosted program titled “Kokrokoo” (Cock-a-doodle doo) on the Accra-based Peace-FM Radio Station.
You see, if the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian citizenry had been let in on the fact that the country has always had official, albeit largely informal, dealings with technocrats at the twin Bretton-Woods establishments of the World Bank – that is, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) – and the IMF, there would have been absolutely no confusion and expression of great disappointment on the part of the general global Ghanaian public, as recently occurred in the wake of the public announcement by Information Minister Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah that the President had, finally, decided to solicit the assistance of these two Bretton-Woods banking establishments.
This was apparently what Dr. John Kumah, the Deputy Finance Minister, also partly sought to explain to the general Ghanaian public, when he recently appeared in Parliament to answer questions on behalf of Mr. Ofori-Atta (See “Ghana Won’t Go to IMF – John Kumah” Modernghana.com 6/23/22). It was tantamount to “double-talk” or rhetorical equivocation and ambivalence because while he aptly hinted at the fact of the seamless intercourse or relationship between the twin Bretton-Woods establishments, Dr. Kumah also gave the curious impression that, somehow, any decision to directly access or solicit the financial assistance of The Fund, perforce, reflected negatively on the managerial performance of the Akufo-Addo Administration.
But, of course, it still left some critical unanswered questions, not the least of which regarded the fact of why successive Ghanaian governments appeared to have consistently and invariably mismanaged the country’s economy, in spite of the fact that they had been receiving continuous financial and fiscal advisory services from the twin Bretton-Woods establishments. Could we therefore hold both the IMF and The World Bank equally responsible for the seemingly intractable socioeconomic problems of the country?
Of course, a valid case could be made in favor of the fact that, for the most part, the IMF and The World Bank were never directly involved in the actual administration of the country’s fiscal policies and financial resource management on the ground, as it were. But then, don’t we also have the catastrophic and historically indelible example of the apocalyptic aftermath of the Kwesi Botchway-midwifed and Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-chaperoned epic disaster that was the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), of the late 1980s and throughout most of the 1990s, to advise ourselves vis-à-vis the kind and sort of relationship that our leaders ought not to forge or pursue with the operatives of the aforementioned Bretton-Woods establishments?
Ultimately, what we have indisputably come to conclude is the fact that Ghana’s present leadership woefully lacks the kind of civic sense of social responsibility and sacrifice that makes the material development of the country seem far more urgent and important than the pathological and kleptocratic urge to first criminally fill their private bank accounts and wallets and those of their closest friends and associates at the expense of the “Commonwealth,” that is, the “Common Good” of the entire country, which, by the way, is the philosophical and ideological principle upon which President Akufo-Addo’s landmark and historically unprecedented Fee-Free Senior High School Policy Initiative and System was civically responsibly predicated.
One could also, of course, make a similar case in favor of the John Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which was criminally and unconscionably bankrupted by the previous John Dramani Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress and had to be promptly resuscitated by the newly elected President Akufo-Addo at the humongous cost of nearly $ 3 billion (USD).
Source: Modern Ghana
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