$1b, $350m loan is a sham ....

...as Peter Harold throws more light

At the last count in Parliament, the embattled Finance Minister Mr Osafo Marfo who was once the Managing Director of the National Investment Bank (NIB) told Ghanaians that the NPP government that introduced HIPC into the country was looking for $350million from the IFC. Earlier Ghanaians were told that the loan was $1billion.

Now Mr Peter Harold, the outgoing World Bank representative in Ghana had told Mr Kweku Sintim Missah (KSM) on his regular ?That?s my Opinion? Tuesday Show that as at now he could not confirm whether the Chemac loan is $350 million or $1billion and that, in any case, the government needed the prior approval of the IMF before contracting the loan.

Mr Peter Harold offered that there are consequences for a country that is under HIPC initiative programme to dribble pass Bretton Wood institution, which is fathering and mothering our economy. He added, ?countries have bridged our contract and hand taken our money. So we don?t want it repeated.?

At this point of the interview, KSM revealed that ?I know that the Government of South Africa has recently raised a billion dollar. It took 25 banks, folks banks to put that loan together. ?We are talking about a country with high credit rating; if it takes them 25 banks to raise a billion dollars, then with our economy fragile and disappointing can they raise the same amount of money from, I guess good hearted business women and men??

Thanks to KSM we now know why the $1billion loan is going to create problems for the NPP administration. As KSM himself puts it ?if the money is available, if it is legitimate money, let?s go for it. But I think the thing we should avoid is to do a deal with the devil in desperation.?

We also add that Chemac is not a banking institution but a company dealing in junk industrial equipment. The candid views expressed by Mr Peter Harold the interview with KSM points to one direction, that for a number of reasons, which does not exclude the lack of transparency in relation to the source of the $1billion loan, the Bretton Wood institution are not going to make things easier for the country.

It is clear that, contrary to the position of the government, it needed approval from its bankers, namely the IMF and the World Bank before even the move was made