Proposed sale of GCB not in the national interest - Addo-Aikins

Accra, July 27, GNA -Nana Addo-Aikins, an Accra legal practitioner has said that Government would not be acting in the national interest if it proceeded to sell its 46 per cent shares in the Ghana Commercial Bank, thereby making a strategic national asset wholly privately owned. In a statement to the media on Sunday, Nana Addo-Aikins urged the government to take the protests and objections against the sale seriously and advise itself accordingly.

He said the test of a caring and capable governance in a developing nation like Ghana lied in a ruling government's ability to protect and manage the nation's utilities, essential social services and strategic assets as a measure for relieving the people of deprivation, hardship as well as the exploitation and infringements on national sovereignty that go with the divestiture of a nation's strategic assets.

According to Nana Addo-Aikins, divestiture as a means of mobilizing resources for running the national economy on the grounds of mismanagement was untenable and an indictment on government's ability to procure and provide local experts to properly manage a national asset like the Ghana Commercial Bank.

"Divestiture of the Ghana Commercial Bank in satisfaction of either the demands of government's capitalist ideology or in satisfaction of IMF/World Bank conditions is both misplaced and unacceptable," the statement said.