The forked-tongue narratives of the world bank and IMF

Compatriots,

A lot of you good debating public will remember some of my many Internet-based posts exhorting our (meek IMF-SAP-indulgent) NDC ‘leaders’ and their (litigious and usurping IMF-SAP-indulgent) NPP ‘opposition’, to nationalise our key economic sectors. I have said this is the only option open to Ghana/Africa to fund a 10-15 year science and technology-led Development and Modernisation Programme. But I am not alone in saying this.

Paradoxically, even though it has presided over the control and wanton exploitation of our key export commodities and industries (gold, diamond, oil, cocoa, bauxite, GIHOC Industries, State Farms, Ghana Airways, Ashanti Gold, Ghana Telecoms, Ghana Stock Exchange, etc) the World Bank is now saying the same thing I have been saying. With predictable forked-tongue, Dr. Dante Mossi, a Senior Operations Officer of the World Bank (WB), recently cautioned Ghana to 'make judicious use of its natural resources if it intends to continue to grow economically'. According to the Dr. Mossi, the wealth of our commodity resources “could be used as a platform for economic and social development. He revealed that the WB's strategy was to align with Ghana’s political cycle of four years, improve designs and innovations to avoid delays, involvement of civil society with project implementation and more strategic use of grants in the portfolio as well as focus on fewer sectors."

The World Bank is disingenuous in saying it is 'working to consolidate the middle income status of Ghana, protect the economy from volatile global commodity prices, improve value for money of public investments, support a financially sustainable energy sector and strengthen public institutions to manage the macro economy and financial sector!’ They have got our leaders to lie to us about 'middle income status of Ghana' since the early 1980s, when they conned JJ Rawlings to surrender Ghana to the grip of western capitalist exploitation, so what is new?

No, our serious development-oriented writers must educate our people to resist the lies. 1) 'Middle income status of Ghana' is illusory in within the rigid stipulations of IMF-SAP’s so-called ‘conditionalities’. 2) The occasional duplicitous chiding of our economically-politically bamboozled leaders from the World Bank is disingenuous. 3) The World bank says it wishes to 'protect the economy from volatile global commodity prices'. This is straight out nonsense. Ghana is an oil producer whose main global commodity import is oil. Why is it that the World bloody Bank and the IMF are not insisting on us retaining our own oil? Why must we buy on the extortionist global oil market?

Lastly, Dr. Mossi revealed that the WB's strategy was to 'align with Ghana’s political cycle of four years'. What utter hogwash! Ghana has advanced underdevelopment - complete with all its features – expressed in abject poverty, some 70% unemployment, high level corruption, lack of basic amenities (like water, light, gas, public toilets), polluted environment (plastic bags and debris all over the place), no good schools, health facilities, transportation and housing, infrastructure, etc.

With such blatant realities of economic backwardness, is it not undermining of the WB to suggest a four-year economic cycle is what is required to reverse the above features of poverty? Is Dr. Mossi and his WB not clearly defining a strategy of failure to further our underdevelopment?

This is why I have suggested Ghana must re-nationalise its key economic sectors. We must thereafter invest the fiscal windfall from the nationalisation into launching a sustainable science and technology-fuelled Development and Modernisation programme (DMP). This will have many benefits. It will industrialise us meteorically. It will create full employment: create industries, infrastructure like roads, railways and air travel, schools, houses, transport, health centres. It will afford us public amenities like parks, toilets, bathhouses, disposable bins to keep our streets and beaches clean. I will even stimulate copy-cat projects all over Africa leading to the Africa Union.

Ghana must reconfigure its economic, social, cultural and political policies within a framework of an economic development and modernisation programme. Do you now see my point about the effect of forked-tongue narratives on our development? Daabe da, as I have repeated till I am textually hoarse, what is needed is a straight forward, unsullied nationalisation of all Ghana's key economic sectors to gain the fiscal source (trillions of £$s) to finance a sustainable 10-15 year DMP.

There is no serious alternative to nationalisation. We are running out of resources fast. They are taking away all our gold, diamond, oil, manganese, bauxite, etc. They are fast deleting by the hour. They is more analytical consideration in this post than what the dooms-day prophets : Otabil, Obinim, T.D. Joshua and others are telling us. WE NEED TO ACT NOW - NOT LATER!!