Ghana Continues To Live On Her Knees Under Mahama

Last week’s news report seems to suggest that President Mahama is poised to sneak in an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the guise of multi-partisan supported plan at the coming economic forum. The agreement, according to the news reports, will require massive loss of government jobs. We have tried this before under President Rawlings and it only resulted in great increase in merchandizing in our streets. I see nothing to say we won’t have the same results this time around. The truth is that not one politician has laid out a proposal that offers a tangible step towards economic freedom and so foreign governments and international organizations can demand that we inflict pain on ourselves in return for aid and loans and our leaders see it as a blessing. They don’t see any way around it.

I have in the past cited Dr. Busia’s broadcast to Ghana saying that his doctor gave him an injection where it hurt the most and he got better quicker. We went through “Operation feed yourself”. We have even worn Rawlings chain and our leaders continue to ask us to endure more for a yet to be realized manna. If Mr. Mahama had told us during his campaign for election that his solution for Ghana’s economic problems would be to go to another country and complain that foreign companies in Ghana were threatening job cuts if he enforced the windfall tax law and that would leave him helpless; and that asking Ghanaians to buy made in Ghana goods and implementing IMF imposed policies would be his major economic policies, we just might have placed our bets with someone else.

Supply and demand in economics should exist in some sort of a contained system for it to make sense. Ghana does not have such contained system therefore supply and demand does not make sense in Ghanaian economy. Of course it makes perfect sense in world economy because demand is demand for a supplier no matter where it comes from. In the world economy, we demand and they supply. This is how IMF sees our economy. The shortsightedness of this is that within Ghana we don’t have supply and demand. We only have demand. Our leaders should have the testicular fortitude (if I may borrow someone else’s phrase) to stand up to these IMF scholars and let them address this shortfall of our economy as part of their well thought through solution for our country. There was trade before there was supply and demand. We have to get our trade set first before we look at supply and demand to fix our economy. We must have something to trade first. Let IMF address that in their economic policy demands on our country.

Some of our past leaders had thought that implementing IMF policies would make manna fall from the heavens for us to pick up off the ground. If that would happen, Rawlings would be hero to all Ghanaians. People actually pay with their lives when we implement such misguided policies. How many people died needlessly the last time we had senseless “redeployment”. People continue to die and what do we want to do, try it again? It is a foolhardy thinking to think that if only I can get this money from IMF… If you can get this money from IMF, the only thing that will happen is that your government may get by. Ghana won’t get by. Ghana will pay the price for many years to come. Leave it alone. Let’s do it with tangible economic policies not proceeds from begging.

In response to a previous opinion article I wrote, a gentleman suggested that Ghanaians should see buying made in Ghana goods as a patriotic duty. After I explained to him that if you are a government and you know what you are doing, you don’t rely on patriotism for an economic policy. I explained that if you have a Ghanaian equivalent to a product, all you have to do is slap a tariff on the foreign product and have it cost much more than the made in Ghana product. The following is what he wrote back to me:

“I know in Egypt and India only fool - really fool will buy a foreign car. They are so heavily taxed to encourage home - made assembled cars.”

This is an economic policy that you don’t need to fire people for. Actually it will put people to work. The thing is do we have, or are we going to have Ghana made alternatives?

Refrigerator for instance is not a new technology. The only thing new about it is that some of today’s refrigerator will tell you when you are running out of some product. We don’t need that sophistication. Making plain old refrigerator to keep food safe should be enough for us. There are many products like this that we can make. I am sure there are people in Ghana who can make them without going to a Polytechnic. The question is if someone embarks on a venture like this, will he or she have a regular supply of materials to sustain the business? These are questions that the government should be tackling before sending people to the merchandising business.

Sophisticated businessmen look for something that people will need over and over again. Today, even people who write computer software try to sell you a subscription to their software rather than have you buy the software outright because if you subscribe, you pay them every month for as long as you need the software. The last I checked, food is something that people need over and over again. How much effort has our government made in this area besides complaining that we are importing too much food? I have written articles on how government can create private business in this area. I will not go over it again. Anyone interested can go back and read some of my past articles.

Incidentally, I went to a funeral for the mother of a friend who I had not seen in a long time. My friend told me that he reads my opinion articles on Ghanaweb and asked if anyone in government had contacted me because I have some good ideas. I told him that even I am beginning to believe that the people in government are there for what they can get out of government rather than to do what they can do to move our country because not just I but many people have offered ideas that could help the country. I have not seen any of them discussed or even given lip service by anyone in our government yet they continue to seem to be at a loss as to what they can do to fix our problems. The thing is that we call people names if they dare to put forth ideas rather than demanding more from the politicians. Someone called my ideas Quixotic. I’d rather have our politicians throw around quixotic ideas rather than none at all because none at all hasn’t done anything for us yet. It’s about time we tried something different and a repeat of Rawlings’ “redeployment” is not going to do it. Let’s start to live on our feet rather than on our knees.

Tony Pobee-Mensah

tpmensahr@yahoo.com

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