Minority Divided Over STX

The New Patriotic Party minority members of parliament are divided over its stance on the STX housing agreement which will provide the country’s security services with decent and dignified 30,000 housing units for the next five years. The opposition NPP has been critical of the 1.5-billion-dollar Security Services housing project but information gleaned by The Enquirer from the corridors of Parliament House indicate that a section of the party’s members of parliament think otherwise and have decided to throw their weight behind the majority NDC to ensure that the deal goes through.

In separate interviews with The Enquirer the minority members who pleaded anonymity for fear of victimization have described the opposing posture taken by their leaders as not only ‘hypocritical’ but also ‘retrogressive’ as far as solving the spiraling housing demand of the country is concerned. These members are praying that the Speaker of Parliament decides on secret balloting when the controversial STX agreement is put before the House for voting. After going through the Parliamentary Committee for Finance, Works and Housing the agreement is expected to go before the whole house tomorrow for members to debate on it after which they vote to approve or reject the agreement.

Some of the pro-STX minority members argue that the agreement is not substantially different from what parliament approved during the regime of former president John Agyekum Kufuor. “The provisions that our leaders have been criticizing are the normal practices when it comes to these types of agreements”, one of them told The Enquirer.

They added that the Kufuor government did not provide parliament with the drawings and designs of the Jubilee House and the NPP affordable housing project but the legislative house approved agreements for their construction. “The NPP did not provide the unit cost of the affordable housing but parliament approved of it”.

“But the NDC has provided to the Committees, the unit cost, drawings and designs of the STX houses and yet some of my colleagues want to oppose it. They have now moved the argument to another level. This is hypocrisy or double standards. I think some of us are opposing STX, just for the sake of it, no wonder Bagbin is accusing us of being jealous”, an NPP MP noted.

Last Tuesday, Mr. Alban Bagbin, the Minister for Works and Housing held a press conference and responding to the concerns raised by the minority MPs over the STX housing project agreement, exposed the double talk of the NPP. The issues raided by the NPP include the reference of STX Engineering and construction as ‘lender’; over securitization of the loan; the waiver of sovereign immunity and the waiver on taxes; some terms of the Draft Suppliers Credit Agreement; and inadequate information to all members of the House. Mr. Bagbin cited an example that In November, 2006 parliament approved a Suppliers Credit Agreement between the Government of Ghana as the “Borrower” and China International Water and Electric Corporation as “Lender” for the supply and installation of materials and equipment under the self-help electrification programme, but the “lender” in this case China Water and Electric Corporation is not a Financial Institution.

In October, 2008 Government again entered into a similar agreement with GK Airports for an amount of 122 Million USD for the expansion of the Takoradi, Kumasi and Sunyani Airports.

“Many similar examples abound with respect to these kinds of agreements. And all these agreements were signed under the watch of the very same Hon Anthony Osei Akoto who was a Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. So you now see the doubletalk, I referred to earlier?” he stated On the issue of the granting of Sovereign Guarantee, he said this has always been the case with all loans and suppliers credit agreements in the country. “The Sovereign Guarantee is simply the collateral for the loan facility, the insurance is the guarantee against political and commercial risk”, he said. “This became even more relevant with regards to Ghana when the NPP, on taking over the reins of Government in 2001 drove out Malaysian investors in Ghana (Ghana Telecom etc”), he noted

In the case of Korea, the perceived risk is high because it was the NPP that decided to unilaterally halt the repayment for two Korean Exim loans and interest before it concluded the HIPC arrangement”, he stressed. On the Sovereign Immunity, he stated that it is indeed standard practice in all loans, suppliers’ credit, or buyers’ credit or howsoever described that passed through governments and parliaments in the country.

“It is unfair for a state to contract a loan and when it comes to time of payment it pleads sovereign immunity”, he noted.

On the waver of taxes and duties, he added that they are standard provisions in all agreements, saying it is more relevant in this particular situation because the houses to be built under the agreement are for government.

“The imposition of these levies and taxes will be additional cost and will simply go to increase the purchase price of the housing units”, he pointed.