NDC Still Dissatisfied With IFC Loan

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Parliamentary Caucus, has stated that it took a very strong position on the International Finance Consortium (IFC) loan agreement because all the documents that came before the House and even the Finance Committee left too many questions on their minds.

It said ?as the watchdog of the unrepresented in this country (those who are not in government), it was incumbent on us to really insist that we wanted the government to come out with a lot of explanation and evidence to show the credibility of the Company?.

The Member of Parliament for Lawra Nandom, Dr Benjamin Kumbour said this in his contribution to a radio panel discussion programme in Accra. The discussion was on, ?The workings of Parliament, partisan nature of debates and compromising the efficiency of Parliament?.

Dr Kumbour said ?in fact you would have heard almost all the issues that people have raised on the IFC loan. But, there is one significant thing that did not come out in the debate which I want members to take note of. You see in an agreement, there is what we call hedging clauses in corporate finance. When you are entering into this type of negotiations, you always try as much as possible to hedge to make it possible for you to minimize your losses in the event that the agreement does not get through". He pointed out that, ?there were too many of them in this agreement, and once you are giving out a sovereign guarantee, what some of us kept asking ourselves was what was the national interest in that particular agreement??.

Dr Kumbour said nationalism is clearly, what one could not understand and what exactly it meant in this particular context. He said in the face of Article 20 of the Constitution, there are some clear circumstances of national security, national safety and public morality reasons that would permit a take over or a compulsory acquisition of any benefits derived up front.

He said, ?Now, if you go into contractual arrangements with this extra provision in your constitution and you enter into this arrangement saying that you cannot nationalize, it certainly raises a very important question. If the loan agreement turns out to be inimical to the national interest and national security, then you cannot nationalize?.

The NDC member of Parliament said, ?if this contract runs into difficulties and you want to invoke Article 20 of the 1992 Constitution to compulsorily acquire the benefits of the rights that are pertinent to this particular loan and you are confronted with this nationalization issue, then it creates a very difficult problem?.

Asked whether the Minority was not given access or ability to conduct due diligence on the loan or whether they were frustrated, Dr Kumbour said, ?we would have preferred giving our support. If you realized, the NDC caucus has always supported almost all financial arrangements by the government.