Since August 2013, however, the state of affairs has gone from bad to worse. The president and the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) have raised the prices of petroleum fuels. The prices of each of super petrol and diesel fuel, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG,) pre-mix fuel (for fishermen) and kerosene have gone up by 40-60%. And there is now in place a monthly review system that keeps raising the price of the super petrol and diesel by at least 3% each time; and then probably at one stage they would reduce it by 0.0001% to create the, taflatse, insulting impression that it is not always increased.
Also the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has allowed the charge for electricity to go up twice, cumulatively, by 100%, and that of water once by 52%. Those are the official figures, but as anyone who buys pre-paid electricity units will testify the actual increase is over 300% in the last six months alone. The rates of extant taxes have gone up and the president has set new taxes; some in areas where he few weeks later had to withdraw the taxes under public pressure – condoms and agricultural machinery. Also to cut public expenditure, the president has scrapped allowances to teacher- and nurse-trainees and the research allowances to university lecturers.
(There will be more on these effects of the totality of those policies and others when we get to the actual State of the Nation below.)
For now, let us affirm the reality: Increases in extant taxes and creating new ones altogether, and sky-high raises in the prices of petroleum fuels and the charges of water and electricity have pushed up prices of all commodities and services. Altogether these have inflicted tough living conditions on all and hardened the ground for businesses, many of which have either had to cut corners to survive, accumulate crushing debts detriment to their future or foreclose completely.
In that light, one expected President John D. Mahama to confront the particulars of those tough living conditions in the State of the Nation Address he gave before Parliament on Tuesday, February 25, 2014. Ti-Kelenkelen expected him to intimately confront those conditions, because they are the results of his own conscious decisions. Those conditions are borne out of what he termed in his statement the bitter pill a sick person needs to take to get well, yet he refused to even look at them.
However, there are more issues in and about the president’s statement.
The first point to note about the statement is that it was not a State of the Nation Address at all, but a campaign statement. In that regard, Rawlings, Kufuor and Mills have all been guilty. A State of the Nation Address is supposed to look at details of all the aspects of the life of the Ghanaian as at the time a president is making the statement before Parliament. It appears, however, that our presidents usually have difficulty confronting the tough conditions they themselves have created through conscious policies. The huge and unfortunate difference is that in Mahama’s case he has inflicted the worst hardships on Ghanaians without providing any social-adjustment components.
When Rawlings accepted the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (WB/IMF) severe macro-economic remodelling policy, Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP,) it had a component called Programme of Action to Mitigate the Social Cost of Adjustment (PAMSCAD.) The only problem with that programme is that Rawlings and his PNDC messed up the PAMSCAD resources that came with the WB/IMF package. The corruption that characterised that programme was terrible. It was so bad that till date Ghana owes thousands of state workers rendered redundant by the (IMF recommended) closure of many factories and establishments Nkrumah built, such as Ghana Railways and the public intra-city transport system, Omnibus Service Authority. (It is important to state in passing that Rawlings closed many industries and public service providers he should not have. The reason is simple: non-profitability and cutting public expenditure were the reasons used singularly or together depending on the affected institution. However, while cost-cutting was a bad reason to shut them down, non-profitability was neither inherent nor insoluble; non-profitability was (or is) the result of lack of prudence, which is a human resource challenge.
In the time of President Kufuor, Ghana declared itself a Highly-Indebted Poor Country (HIPC,) and qualified for forgiveness of all her debts owed to the World Bank and developed countries in return for instituting tough macro-economic policies, such as opening up our banking industries to foreign banks. In some instance, the IMF demanded the outright sale of certain public banks, such as Agricultural Development Bank and Ghana Commercial Bank. The only factor that stopped such outright sales at that time was public pressure. (However, by the time of President Mills that policy had returned but as a masquerade, a Bank of Ghana policy that all banks must meet a certain minimum capital requirement. That has forced many of our banks to seek out and incorporate into their shareholder portfolio foreign partners who have come in with the top up. That is sad and ominous!) Kufuor re-opened and re-created the public transport system as Metro Mass Transit, and partially revived the Ghana Railways Service. There the social intervention measures were that fares were less than for private (commercial) transport and school children in uniform could ride free.
The best of all social intervention programmes is the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Kufuor established in 2003. The NHIS polls monies from several sources – levies on SSNIT contributors, a VAT component and contributions from registered scheme participants. In the scheme registered adult members pay yearly minimum premiums so that they and other members of their households could go to hospital year round and pay nothing for regular services and products and less for complex procedures. Admittedly, the NHIS had difficulties during the Kufuor era, but was running smoothly. Since 2009 (to date) multiple difficulties – some the fault of national administrations – the NHIS has been collapsing – or is it – collapsed.
One Kufuor policy Ti-Kelenkelen will always disagrees with is the sale of Ghana Telecom to Vodafone. Since he did it in his eighth year, it is not clear if it was an IMF demand for HIPC. What is for certain is that he should not have sold off state control in an industry that is strategic both as a national-security entity and is key to national competitiveness in global affairs for now and the future as a very viable and profitable commercial industry with awesome possibilities.
The president’s address to Parliament last Tuesday was largely a programme for infrastructural programmes he intends to do – a clear campaign statement. As far as the many more promises of projects go, Ti-Kelenkelen has only one comment. Our Elders tell us in Twi: “Se kwatrekwa se obe tse wo ntoma a, tie ne din” – If (the) Naked Person says he will give you a (gift in) cloth, (just) listen to his or her name. Since the Mills era, national administrations have been cash-strapped. That is so severe for this Mahama administration, because of two reasons. One, they are bankrupt of ideas for raising money in ways that does not hurt the economy and people, and two, a good part of the little money public institutions raise is siphoned away by stealing and corruption done with impunity by public officials.
No, Ti-Kelenkelen is not rejoicing over such national predicament. This column is about the progressive interest and welfare of the people, and if the state has the money to build the plethora of infrastructure the president always lists in his public speeches that would be great. President Mahama always lists those grand projects – a university in every region, 100 district hospitals, 1,000 Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) centres, 2,000 basic & secondary schools, etc. The interesting point is that he lists them when he knows Ghana does not have the money to begin doing them; it is akin to playing a game with Ananse and trying to rig the game.
Highlights
1.
“…One expected President John D. Mahama to confront the particulars of those tough living conditions in the State of the Nation Address he gave before Parliament on Tuesday, February 25, 2014…, because they are the results of his own conscious decisions… borne of what he termed in his statement the bitter pill a sick person needs to take to get well, yet he refused to even look at them.”
2.
“This column is about the progressive interest and welfare of the people, and if the state has the money to build the plethora of infrastructure the president always lists in his public speeches that would be great… The interesting point is that he lists them when he knows Ghana does not have the money to begin doing them; it is akin to playing a game with Ananse and trying to rig the game.”
Source: Ghana | todaygh.com | Yirenkyi Lamptey