IMF bailout: Our national descent to economic serfdom — CPP
The Convention People’s Party has said the current financial and economic challenges facing the country is the result of poor and corrupt fiscal management.
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It said the government had now turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for economic development policy direction and financial bailout because the government was unable to craft a development policy from our culture and history.
A statement signed by Ms Samia Yaba Nkrumah, CPP Chairman and Leader, said Ghana justified her struggle for political freedom in the belief that self-government with danger was preferred to servitude in tranquillity.
The statement, however, said Ghana was certain to reap servitude with danger in the negotiations with the IMF.
“This is the ultimate outcome of the bailout conditions negotiations because it will exclude any independent development policy initiative by our government and insist on compliance with policy dictates of the IMF.
‘’That will take the country back to the colonial pattern of relations where the country is only supplier of raw materials for industries in other countries,’’ it stated.
Fiscal policy
According to the statement, the implicit loss of control of fiscal and monetary policy meant a reduction in the capacity of the government to support and create opportunities for its local entrepreneurs to produce and manufacture goods to meet the needs of the country.
Predictably, the statement said, the IMF would, for example, demand the privatisation of the Tema Oil Refinery, one of the nation’s most valuable investments, as a subterfuge to import refined fuel products and also to avert the development of a petrolchemical industry in our country as envisaged in that investment.
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It also said the recurring prescription of a tight fiscal and monetary policy would preclude and forestall government intervention to promote investments in the search for economic independence.
The IMF policy prescription of liberalisation of trade and financial markets in the bailout negotiations will also deny the government’s support for the co-operative sector and farmer-based organisations in food and raw material production.
The CPP statement further said it would also deprive Ghana of ownership of productive resources on account of its weaker position to compete for the control of these resources and markets.
In the labour and social sectors, the statement said the conditions would include a freeze on wages, a cutback on social support services and opportunities for employment creation which would continue to deepen our poverty.
IMF endorsement
According to the CPP statement, the government had argued that an IMF endorsement of our national economy in the bailout negotiations was required to leverage international economic relations for development.
Rather, the statement said as history suggests, international economic relations were driven by a nation’s search for global resources and its overt and covert schemes to appropriate and control those resources, and not by the IMF’s endorsement of their economies.
“This explains why Zimbabwe receives foreign investments in her mining sector in spite of an IMF embargo,” it stated.
“The logic of our struggle for independence is that political power and freedom is the necessary condition for our development and prosperity that should never be surrendered”, the CPP statement added.
In the view of the CPP “Our economy will not be revived by IMF development policy prescription of fiscal austerity, a hasty and premature liberalisation of trade and financial markets but by an adoption of the Nkrumaist development policy guidelines of decolonisation based on lessons learnt from our history of slavery and colonialism.”
The statement added that this has been proven by the tenure and development achievements of the CPP government of the first republic, saying, “The IMF on the other hand has no proven track record of guiding any under-developed economy to economic prosperity.”