Ordinarily, it should not raise many eye brows if a well-administered country, under a trustworthy and competent government, decides to plan 40 years, 50 years, even 100 years ahead.
But alas, is Ghana, under the Mahama Administration, a country that one can say is administered well-enough when the oil-producing country has been racked by an unprecedented 4-year old dumsor crises and has been described by the Bretton Woods institutions as a high risk, debt distressed country? Corruption has become so rife and rampant that former President Rawlings has said the corruption level at the time of his 1979 Coup was not at 10% of the level it is at today.
Given what we know about much of Ghana’s problems which have invariably resulted from derailment of short- and medium-term plans, is this the time to spend money and resources we do not have establishing a 40-year development plan while our short and medium term plans are still in limbo? For a country where medical Housemen have gone for as long as 11 months without salaries because of a broken system, should the nation’s economic planning priorities be switched to the creation of a 40-year development plan?
What is it that makes the Mahama Administration so enamored with a 40-year development plan when it has problems implementing even shorter-term plans? A cursory examination of the record of the Mills and Mahama Administrations will not fail to convince most discerning people that this much heralded 40-Year Development Plan is nothing but yet another cash-wasting venture for political effect.
The construction of an affordable housing project that was on-going as at the end of the Kufuor Administration has remained in limbo since the NDC returned to power. Why would we abandon that project deemed necessary for the needs of today in favour of housing plans that might be needed 40 years from now?
In July 2006, during the NPP Administration, the Energy Commission, as a consequence of the vision of the government came out with a 135-page document that was titled Strategic National Energy Plan (2006 – 2020). The target of this 14-year Energy Plan was to plan for long-term energy security consistent with the then projected robust economic, industrial and population growth. The Bui Project and some other significant projects were envisaged in this plan.
Part of the strategic energy plan envisaged the construction of hydro-projects on some selected river bodies in Ghana. Indeed, before the exit of the Kufuor Administration, a loan facility had been contracted with Brazil for the take-off of this project. In 2009, Vice President John Mahama travelled to Brazil where he successfully negotiated for the loan to be diverted towards what he coined as “the Gang of Four” Projects. The view of the Mills-Mahama Administration was that with the coming on stream of the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP), the Bui Dam, Atuabo Gas Project, the expanded capacities of Akosombo and Aboadze, plus some other newer energy sources, Ghana’s energy needs were sufficiently tackled as to justify the diversion of the loan to the “Gang of Four” Projects. Were they?
Will it be far-fetched to say that the almost four-year long dumsor crisis could have been truly “a thing of the past” if the 14-year Strategic Energy Plan had been followed by the NDC Administrations of Mills and Mahama?
When in 2014, the Mahama Administration was gripped with the agonizing reality that the mismanagement of the economy had made an IMF bail-out inevitable, the government quickly established what came to be known as the Senchi Accord. Senchi was the government’s round-about way of saying that let the reckless spending of 2012 and the unbridled borrowing since then be considered bygones while we craft a new, forward-looking, economic growth framework. That new framework was the 22-point Senchi Accord.
What is the state of the 22-point Senchi accord? Should we not be not be informed about how diligently the government is implementing this Accord before we spend time, energy and resources on yet another grandiose economic development plan on paper, this one spanning 40 years?
In recent years, Ghanaians have seen the worst of ramshackle governance. Ghanaians have seen fraudulent Judgement Debts; undredged waterways since 2009 (until after the June 4 flooding disaster); unprecedented levels of corruption; collapsing social intervention programs like the NHIS; overdue arrears in payment of Capitation Grant, District Assembly Common Fund, NHIS levies, etc; unbridled borrowing; dumsor; political projects. Against this gloomy backdrop, on what foundation are we going to create a 40-year development plan when we have not successfully implemented the short- and medium-term plans?
And by the way, what happened to the 2057 Development Budget that was launched eight years ago in August 2007 by Vice President Aliu Mahama?
NPP Canada Communication Team
NPPCanada@outlook.com
Tel: 587-708-9915 / 647-800-3585
