So As To Limit Our Overdependence On Foreign Loans.

By: Otchere Darko.

“Govt Wants to Use Oil Revenue for International Loans”; [Ghanaweb; Business News of Tuesday, 23 November 2010; Source: Bloomberg]

Ghanaians have been blessed to have had a variety of past leaders, including those who drew crowds, and those who did not; those who focussed on Africanism, and those who focussed on Ghanaian nationalism; those who had chains of degrees, and those who had not even a first degree; those who succeeded to step on the corridors of power, and those who never made it; those who had clear ideas which they will always be associated with and remembered for, and those who had no clear ideas; etc. Among these leaders was one leader whose full name I never even knew, nor was he known anywhere outside the media; who was always seen as a “joker” by those members of the Ghanaian electorate who knew him; but who, nonetheless, came out with one clear and simple idea which he called “domestication”.

That man never had the chance to put his “domestication” idea into practice, but he told Ghanaians what the idea was about. By “domestication”, this man of blessed memory did not mean “taming animals”. He meant ‘Ghana must use “its domestic resources” for its development’. In other words, he meant our leaders must stop relying on foreign loans, foreign ideas, and foreign expertise to develop; and should, rather, ‘make our coat with our own cloth; in our own way; and only as big as the size of our cloth allows us’.

Yes, the Government of America, the richest country in the world, even borrows. People always use this to justify the mad and uncontrolled borrowing appetite of our leaders. What these people don’t say is that American Government does not go round the world from country to country looking for money to borrow. It creates and markets its own “instruments of debt” in order to raise the extra money it needs to balance its budget. It then leaves countries and financial institutions that have the means to buy them, to buy them if they want. In other words, the Government of America does not “chase” countries and financial institutions to seek loans from them, as our Government does. American Government uses modalities that are self-contrived; and debts created from them do not carry elements of national subjugation of the type countries like Ghana go through when we borrow from foreign countries, or from IMF, or other international financial institutions, through international brokers who, apart from their own high charges, also work hand-in-hand with these foreign lenders to demand from borrowers suicidal concessions that are worse than even those that were extracted by Shylock from Antonio and Bassanio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

“It is a ‘fool’ who uses his ‘cocoa farm’ as collateral to secure a loan to build a house,” an elder in my hometown always said. “A wise man waits and uses the incomes from his cocoa harvests to build his house bit by bit. In this way, he can never lose his farm, nor the house he is building.” The elder could not have been more right. And a country is not very different from the ‘cocoa farmer’. Why should the Government plan for projects which the country cannot fund now with its own resources and, therefore, have to use oil which has not even come out of the ground as “security” for loans to finance such projects? Why can’t such projects wait till we make the money to finance them on our own and avoid interest payments and other costs associated with loans? Why should politicians in government mortgage Ghana’s oil to secure loans in order to embark on projects to improve the electoral chances of their parties, while the future of the nation is put at a risk? Why can’t our leaders have any “sense of shame” for always going around the world and begging for loans? Why can’t they think about the need to safeguard Ghana’s economic sovereignty? Why do we have to sacrifice the nation’s hard won independence by mortgaging our country’s economic future? Why are Ghanaians quiet, while our politicians wreck the country’s future? Where are the CPPs, the PNCs, the Kwesi Pratts, and all the others who brag as Nkrumahists? Where are they while Ghana’s independence is being recklessly traded in for foreign loans?

No, we must not sacrifice our independence. We must control our excessive dependence on external borrowing. We must start to be self-reliant. Yes, we may need to seek external support. But no, it must not be all the time. We cannot rely on, and use external loans all the time to develop. We must begin, now, to cut our coat according to the size of the cloth we have. We must now try and rely on our own domestic resources. Where we have to wait a little, we have to wait a little; instead of always rushing to embark on projects we cannot finance domestically and, therefore, have to borrow from outside to finance them. We must curtail our dependence on external loans. This, in part, is what “Uncle Lartey” of blessed memory called “domestication”. Less “external borrowing”; and more “self-reliance”. It must happen NOW!

Source: Otchere Darko.[This writer is a centrist, semi-liberalist, pragmatist, an advocate for “inter-ethnic cooperation and unity” and a community-based development protagonist. He opposes the negative, corrupt, and domineering politics of NDC and NPP; actively campaigns for the development and strengthening of “third parties”; and opposes a two-party only system of democracy in Ghana.]