TiSA: A teaser of what lies in store?

Ghana has been gripped lately by what has been broadly described by policymakers as the deregulation of the prices of petroleum products.

The central but rather simplistic rationale is( to quote a Joy FM report) that “the deregulation policy is expected to allow marketers and importers of Petroleum products to set their own prices and bring an end to government subsidy on the commodity.” The National Petroleum Authority(NPA) has released a press statement on this.

To be sure there have been critiques(in the public sphere of discourse) of this seemingly rushed move to get the putative self-regulating market to determine the prices of  petroleum products in a restive Ghanaian economy(the economy is effectively undergoing de-industrialisation, has been buffeted by high unmanageable debt, a depreciating cedi, high cost of living among other ills).

These critiques have centered rightly on the absence of the necessary legal framework to back the so-called deregulation policy and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) long held(but rather short sighted view) that subsidies are essentially a destructive anathema for any developing economy (one of the key planks of the much derided Washington Consensus).

While these positions are useful, it is important as well to focus on the ongoing attempts in the international political economy to essentially emasculate the capacity of governments to craft independent policies in strategic sectors of the economy.

In effect then, Ghana’s hasty petroleum sector deregulation move may be just a symptom of a masked far more insidious agenda already underway.

This enterprise is encapsulated in ongoing negotiations (in Geneva; negotiations began as far back as 2012) in what is known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) which is led by the United States and the EU and involves as of now 51 countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa are not part of the negotiations).

The central focus of TiSA (promoted under the aegis of free trade and liberalisation of the neo-liberal kind) is to essentially outlaw the legislative and regulatory powers of governments in critical sectors such as healthcare, financial services, communications, transportation, education and consulting services.

Ultimately, therefore, when this agreement is reached, powerful multinational corporations are to be treated equally as domestic social and economic players in the provision of such critical services under an overarching TiSA against which governments can do nothing. 

Negotiation

What is worrying about the TiSA negotiations is that the key documents concerning these negotiations have been shrouded in secrecy and have become only available to other interested parties after Wikileaks released 17 vital documents related to TiSA.

Many countries have begun to experience the negative effects of the so-called privatisation and marketisation leading to what is known as “re-municipalisation”(returning privatised services back to the public sector) in countries such as Germany, Argentina, Tanzania, Canada, France and Malaysia. The sectors re-municipalised include electricity (which Ghana is currently considering), transport, waste management, housing and water sectors.

It is clear that the leading parties engaged in TiSA seek to muscle their way into vulnerable markets and dominate them in a ratchet effect mode. The EU, for instance, is clear on this: “trade in services is of strategic importance, the sector accounting for some three-quarters of EU gross domestic product (GDP) and of EU jobs.”

For Strategy three, these are the wider questions which Ghana’s media, political parties, civil society organisations and the enlightened citizenry must be concerned about in order to respond in a strategic manner which keeps our nation’s long term socio-economic interests protected.

The so-called petroleum sector deregulation policy must be the first brazen salvo in a cleverly disguised and surreptitious move to lock down Ghana’s market. Ghana’s government has lots of questions to answer and NOW.

The author is the Lead Strategist and Head Governance and Strategy Policy Unit Strategy3