June 12, 2016


NPP-Canada will have no qualms endorsing the Komenda Sugar Factory IF satisfactory answers could be had for the following questions.

1. A popular refrain of the P(NDC) in the late 80s and early 90s was: “the private sector is the engine of growth”. This eureka revelation on the part of the P(NDC) crystallized into what became known as the Divestiture Implementation Program (DIP). The DIP in its wisdom divested off the then Komenda Sugar Factory.
Why the U-Turn by the Mahama Administration?

2. To the above, some may argue that only a fool will not change his mind when the tide changes. That is true enough. Was it a fool who sold off the then Merchant Bank? Or the tide had not changed then?

3. What makes it economically and philosophically smart for a so-called Social Economic government to build a Sugar Factory, plan to start a National Airline, but all the while planning to privatize the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG)?

4. Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, made his billions in Cement, Flour and SUGAR. Mr. Dangote has built factories in several countries in Africa. Dangote SUGAR Refinery in Nigeria is the 2nd largest in the World. Mr. Dangote has said that the worst climates for investment are those countries in which he has to build his own power plant to provide reliable energy to support his factories. In an interview a few years ago, Mr. Dangote mentioned Ethiopia and South Africa as two countries where he was happy to invest in not least because he did not have to build a power plant.

Shouldn’t the Mahama Administration invest in the ECG and leave the investments in Sugar Factories to the Dangotes, the Nduoms, and the Osei Kwame Despites of the world?

5. The Ghana Compact of the Millenium Challenge Account (MCA) signed in 2006 by the Kufuor Administration had a grant total of $547 million.

The Ghana Compact was designed to raise farmer incomes through private sector-led agribusiness development. Projects aimed to strengthen production, help move goods to markets more efficiently, and improve farm communities and farmers’ livelihoods.

With a cross-sector approach to transforming agribusiness across 30 districts in Ghana, the compact undertook and completed one of Ghana’s most significant infrastructure projects: a critical section of the N1 Highway.

Would an approach such as the MCA model was not yield greater dividends for the Ghanaian people than the discredited, government-in-business model that this new Komenda Sugar Factory portends?

6. The plans for the creation of a so-called 40-year Development Plan for Ghana was heralded with the usual fanfare by the Mahama Administration and the Dr. Nii Moi Thompson-led National Development Planning Commission (NDPC). Under this 40-year Development Plan, is it a private-sector led development policy that is envisaged or it is a government-in-business approach that is envisaged? Or perhaps it is a “hybrid” like we say of the Ghana democratic model?

7. While the Mahama Administration is busily taking loans to go down a nostalgic but discredited path of State-Owned Businesses, the plight of brilliant but needy SHS, Vocational and University graduates continues to grow worse. Indeed, an SHS graduate in the Western Region nearly died of a suicide attempt about a month ago. Her reason for wanting to end her young life was that the withdrawal of allowances for Nursing and Teacher trainees had foreclosed on the only viable path she had to educating herself beyond SHS.

Has the Mahama Administration got the right policies to help this SHS girl who nearly died because of the bleak future she faces in contemporary Ghana?

8. Do we have a costly, sugar-coated propaganda on our hands or we don’t?



Gilbert Adu Gyimah
Director of Communications, NPP/Canada
NPPCanada@outlook.com
www.nppcanada.org
Tel: 587-708-9915 / 289-627-7557