Every year before the budget is finalised the representatives of the government of Ghana and its development partners meet to review progress made in the economy.
Commitments to support the budget are then eventually made by the partners in their capacity as donors. Naturally the budget support is influenced by the acceptance of “suggestions” or “comments” by the donors.
The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning opened this year’s meeting recently and remarked that the uncertainty of the amount to be expected from donors created imbalances in the budget.
In other words we do not plan what we want to do and raise enough funds from taxes and other normal sources to finance our objectives. We leave a gap in our income projection for our partners to fill. Naturally, we are obedient to their development philosophies and proposals. But even so we are not certain about what to expect.
Finance Minister Seth Terkper, therefore rightly observed that the uncertainty of the amount to be expected of our partners/donors each year created imbalances in the budget. He is reported to have “seen MDBS (Multi-Donor Budget Support) the destabilising factor to the budget”.
He continued to suggest that we should avoid that. But how do we do that? The partners/donors contributed US$310 million in the 2012 budget. Without this contribution we would have had to pay more taxes (direct and indirect), cut out unnecessary expenditure, streamline our requirements, ruthlessly deal with corruption and indiscipline in financial administration, set the people to work and above all, work much harder.
Ghanaians who should know better strangely believe that we cannot do without donors. They think we need external assistance. They believe we need partners.
True, in the global village we should all be partners for progress. But while we cooperate in the inter-dependent world we should look after our interests. If a particular system or arrangement does not promote our interests we should be wary of it. And what has partnership achieved for us?
We should not act like kids and support a system or practice because it is described by nice words. Partnership is good in human relations and in business.
But in business obligations and returns are shared. Now what do we get from our “partnership” with Europe? “It has been estimated that Ghana will lose about $88.75 million per annum between 2008 and 2012 if it does not reverse the current interim Economic Partnership Agreement it has signed with the European Union”.
This came out of a study commissioned by the General Agricultural Workers’ Union and sponsored by Action Aid Ghana. It came out that under the Agreement we could not adjust tariffs to protect vulnerable local industries such as the poultry, rice and tomato sub-sectors.
When the donors meet Ghana however, the importance of a liberalised economy would be stressed and we would be persuaded not to adopt appropriate temporary measures to protect vulnerable but necessary industries.
And if we do not put our house in order and are eventually compelled to go to the IMF and the other donors for assistance, more of the same medicine which has kept us just afloat since the Structural Adjustment Programme, would be forced on us. We would be saved from economic collapse but no more.
We would then continue to build innumerable kiosks to sell what others produce and our unemployed youth would leave the shores of sinking Ghana for what is wrongly believed to be greener pastures and drown even as we seek the promise land.
We should therefore put our house in order and reduce the budget deficit which was 12 per cent in 2012. To do this we have to squarely confront our past. It was good to raise salaries but the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy has raised problems which we should face and address. We cannot continue to pay people and not give them the tools with which to work.
If we have made mistakes we should admit them at least in inner chambers and find solutions while “information” officials and diplomats maintain the infallibility of government.
We have enough brains in the country to tell us that the growing current account deficit exposes the country to risk and that the fall in the earnings from our raw material exports in an uncertain world financial atmosphere should be a matter of great concern.
How we ride any future storms depends upon us. Our partners have their own internal problems as well as difficult issues in Greece, Spain and Italy. We should take note of how they deal with their “kith and kin”.
This is not the time for uninformed comments in the media and ponderous but meaningless pronouncements by under-employed political leaders.
The times call for hard thinking in conclaves by ministers and their officials.
By K. B. Asante/Daily Graphic/Ghana
