What Are We Buying Into, Mr. President?

There is nothing wrong with asking Ghanaians to buy made-in-Ghana goods. Each time I go to a Ghanaian food store, I feel like I have done my part in whatever small way. The fact still remains that you can preach and preach for people to buy mad-in-Ghana goods, it doesn’t replace good policies and that is the job of the politicians: those who have put themselves out and taken on the responsibility to solve the country’s problems. Nobody made President Mahama a politician. He made himself a politician. What was his plan for solving our import problems? Was it to ask us to buy into whatever he thinks we should buy into? That is not policy. Come on, Mr. President. We need better than that.

Let me see…. If we stop drinking tea and coffee, we cut down the importation of tea and coffee. I guess that helps, but what does it do for sugar and milk? Is it that the next step is to appeal to our patriotism and ask us to have coco and other porridge without sugar and milk? Where is the local substitute for sugar and milk? Or should we just cut out porridge all together?

Here is how good government policies can help us better than just appealing to us to buy made-in-Ghana goods. Komenda Sugar Factory still remains in ruin. It takes government policy to bring it back to production. Sorry, I forgot; we are waiting for foreign investors to come do that for us.

Right in Accra, as late as 2009, I saw people taking half the street to take their cows to pasture. I saw the same thing in Cape Coast. What will it take to have these cows and their owners moved to live on the pasture, a piece of grassland? And do we lack grassland in Ghana? If we are paying the President to be president, why shouldn’t that be enough to appeal to his patriotism to get him to think of ways to do little things like to move those who care for these cows and goats and so on onto areas where the cows will have food aplenty, with pond to provide them with water on demand and maybe a shelter so that the cows can take shelter from the sun.

If we do these things, chances are we will have healthy, well fed cows that maybe can produce milk. We can provide expects in the form of those coming out of our universities with degrees in Agriculture to guide these people to buy more productive cows and guide them in raising the cows to maximum production of milk. Then I guess we have to have factories to process the milk and can them. Sorry again. We are waiting for foreign investors to come do it for us.

I asked a friend if he will pay 10, 20, 30 or maybe even 50 dollars every month to Ghana government if the government will invest the money in some of the areas we need investments in with the view that he will get his money back someday with the yield. He said he would. I will do it too. The fact is that if you don’t try it, you won’t know if it will work. Why can’t the government appeal to our patriotism this way instead? If we could make such investment, then you don’t have to tell people to buy made-in-Ghana milk. They will find out in the market that the made-in-Ghana milk cost about 3 or 4 times less than the British milk because of tariffs. Sooner or later, the choice will be clear to all.

While I am here, let me ask a dumb question. Why is it that after 57 years and one government after the next, we still don’t have a structured tax system? We have had policies like if you are going abroad, then you have to pay some tax whether we have a job or not. What does it take to think of better policies and give it a try? Despite the fact that we continue to have people whose homes are at “circle” and we continue to have many people who live at whoever’s veranda they can find to lay their heads at night, I dare say that many, many Ghanaians have homes to go to. Many businesses are located in buildings. Can we base our taxes on buildings until we can do better? No home or building will run off when the tax man is coming.

If we base our tax system on homes and buildings, the landlords will be assessed a tax based on the number of dwellings in the house and they can in turn pass the tax on to the tenants. Single family homes will be assessed as such and business buildings will be assessed too. After all, they are making money in these buildings. This sounds to me like a better structured way to tax than what we currently have which has not worked for how many years? And why can’t President Mahama demonstrate his patriotism by evaluating this possibility? Of course we have another election coming with the usual faces and the same gimmicks and no innovation. Oh Ghana.

tpmensahr@yahoo.com