One per cent tax on hotel beds; The whys and the wherefores

If, like me, academic credentials impress you; if raw passion infects you like it does me; if determination, alone, can put beggars on horses, and if noble words of hope - alone - constitute the criteria for success, then I can prophesy to the good people of Ghana, in general, and tourism practitioners, in particular, that the future of tourism is bright, so bright the country can forget about oil, cocoa and gold.

Check the credentials of Abraham Tetteh, the man on whose abilities and integrity hangs the success of the most ambitious tourism plan ever put together in this country – the Tourism Development Fund. He is a finance man, with an MSc degree in Financial Management from the University of East London, a chartered accountant with an ACCA and an IIPA (Institute of Incorporated Public Accountants). Added to all of the above is the one qualification that brought smiles on the faces of the panel that interviewed him for the job: his first degree - from UCC - is a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Tourism. 

Check the background of Akunu (formerly John) Dake, current chairman of the Ghana Tourism Authourity (GTA) Board. The man has once functioned as a Deputy Minister of State for Culture and Tourism. Everybody in Ghana who speaks the truth will tell you of the glorious days of PANAFEST. Those were the years when people of African descent were flying down from the USA, the UK, the Bahamas and other countries in planeloads for the festival. Those were the Akunu years when PANAFEST attracted the likes of Stevie Wonder and Isaac Hayes. 

Did you ever meet Charles Osei Bonsu? Long before the minister announced his appointment as CEO of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), he was on my list of three persons for the job. (Sir) Charles is a towering guru, a truly knowledgeable and experienced tourism pro. If hard work kills, he should be dead by now. 

Tourism as business

Add to all the above, a new word – BUSINESS - has been dropped into Ghana’s tourism vocabulary by Mr Samuel Atta Mills, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana Tourist Development Company Ltd. Fully spelt out, the GTDC boss sees tourism as “Business”. For him, any tourism endeavour that doesn’t translate into a fattening of the bank account of shareholders or investors will be taking us nowhere. 

To complete the cycle of hopes and assurances, check the speeches and gauge the passion of the current Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Mrs Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare. With one eye looking into an invisible crystal ball (that gives her so much confidence in the future) and another eye on the integrity of the structures she has put in place, plus the calibre of her appointees, her vision is for a future in which the presence of the ministry will not be needed at budget hearings because it would be so well resourced on its own internally generated funds (IGFs) that it would have weaned itself from the government’s handouts. 

Will these five powerful ingredients be enough to breathe hope into a not very hopeful situation?  Are we about to celebrate tourism’s finest hour? Among those who will respond in the affirmative, I am one; and once again, my confidence is built on words, this time, words from a totally unexpected quarter. 

For the first time ever (as far as I recall), a governor of the Bank of Ghana has publicly proposed that: “Tourism offers hope for the future of Ghana’s economy!” I couldn’t believe my ears, but that was Dr Wampah, three weeks ago. 

A week after this statement, the Director for Economic Research and Forecast at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Alhassan Iddrisu, told a tourism stakeholders meeting at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel, that “If appropriate instruments are provided and efficient measures are put in place, tourism could become the leading contributor to the national economy!” 

Advocacy statement 

I have been around long enough to know that it is not often that economists, engineers and pathologists decide to place their bet on tourism (and culture).  So coming from these two economists who have spent their entire lives looking through a prism to see where Ghana’s economic future lies, these are not statements we should allow to remain mere words. They constitute tourism’s strongest advocacy statements yet. 

Ask any Minister of Culture since Kwame Nkrumah’s era, and all Ministers of Tourism since 1992. A year - maximum two years - after taking up the appointment, something happens to their confidence level. When you see them go with bowed heads, it is not because they are looking for a lost pin. It is because they have tears in their eyes. The spirit in them has run away; their gait, once springy, is now limp; the fire that used to burn in their bones is dying out. Why? An anaemia of funds has rendered all their earth-shaking ambitious ideas mere pipe-dreams. At the ministry which they head, the annual budget allocation can only pay salaries. 

Ask Michael Attipoe and Mr Kofi Amoatey. There have been years when the money for the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFAC) was released two days to the D-Day - and even that was when the Minister of Culture or Chairman of the National Commission for Culture happened to be buddy-buddy with the Minister of Finance. 

In the second decade of the 21st century, the Ghana Tourism Authority has had to borrow money from private sources to pay the country’s way to international marketing exhibitions! 

To end these tears, the Professor Hagan administration of the National Commission for Culture proposed and got the government to approve the setting up of a Cultural Trust Fund. The government duly put in seed money of ¢2 billion (old cedis). That money was said to have been deposited with the Bank of Ghana. Six months later, the money vanished from the Bank of Ghana. Till this day, it remains untraceable, unaccounted for.

So when, in the wisdom of the government, the proposal for a Tourism Development Fund was approved in 2012 with the objective of providing funding for tourism and tourism-related projects and programmes, stakeholders rejected any solution that either relied on dole-outs from or required payments into that bottomless pot called Government Consolidated Fund. 

Stakeholders voted for what industry players call bed tax (so named because its strength lies in taxing of hotel beds), a self-financing system of one per cent levy payable by patrons of tourism facilities. 

About this fund – how much transparency and honesty are required to keep it safe, and about  who qualifies to draw from it ?– more anon.