IMANI Replies Gov’t On $3bn Chinese Loan

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday January 5, 2011.
IMANI Ghana, a data and policy analysis think tank, has hit back at the government for trying to run down a study it conducted into the $3 billion loan secured by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government from their Chinese counterparts.

According to IMANI Ghana, it was clear the government’s communicators were running away from the real issues that they raised and attacking their personalities and IMANI as an organization in general.

The policy think-tank’s crime was that it released a statement saying it doubted whether the loan - hailed by the government as the best thing ever to happen to Ghana - was going to be a panacea to the nation’s infrastructural challenges.

Moments after the release, the government’s communicators took turns to run down the report.

Koku Anyidoho, Director of Communications at the Presidency, said the researchers have been paid to down play the $3 billion Chinese loan while Stan Dogbe, a presidential staffer, who recently cashed GH¢169,000, equivalent to ¢1.6 billion cedis to buy hampers and organize seminars for journalists on the 2010 Budget, said IMANI was being mischievous in a bid to satisfy their paymasters to block the facility.

Fifi Kwetey, a deputy Minister of Finance said “listening to IMANI president Franklin Cudjoe’s arguments seeking to portray IMANI as an organization out to do an independent work betray a certain remarkable affinity to some of the things NPP clearly has been doing.”

Kwadwo Twum Boafo, CEO of the Ghana Free Zones Board said IMANI should simply declare themselves appendages of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) because he “cannot understand how a supposedly credible think tank can caution the government premised on falsehood.

Sedina Tamakloe Attionu, CEO of the Ghana Youth Authority, described IMANI as a leaking tank and not any think tank
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However, IMANI has said it is not perturbed by the barrage of insults heaped on them by the presidential spokespersons and reaffirmed that their credibility is intact.

“We were completely taken aback by the reaction of a number of Government Spokespersons to our recent comment on the China Development Bank (CDB) loan facility for infrastructure development.

“Most of the reactions were hasty, over-generalized and in some instances frantic. More worryingly, nearly all of them were also wrong.”

IMANI was of the view that the “said reactions tended to skirt around the vital points we had made to focus on non-essentials.”

They said “at no point did we denigrate the source, objectives or motives behind the loan. We had not sought to perform any critical analysis on the agreements governing the loan facility. Since Parliament has shown clear interest in examining these matters, our approach has been to leave the legal scrutiny in their hands until we had cause to believe something was amiss.”

“At no point did we suggest that no portion of the loan will materialize or that the CDB was incapable or disinterested in fulfilling their side of the agreement.

“What we set out to do was to examine one dimension of the loan process: actual amounts of disbursement from the point of view of the lender, the China Development Bank. This is something that had not been done to date and having discerned some of the patterns behind their lending strategy, we felt it was important to share our findings with the general public, especially with regard to how such a strategy is likely to align or misalign with the short-term policy vision of the government.”

IMANI said the government moreover concedes that the $3 billion will be disbursed over five years and that there is currently only one agreement before Parliament that can release even one cent of the money to Ghana, and that this agreement concerns one billion dollars, not all of which is guaranteed to be disbursed immediately or indeed within 2012.

“Therefore, government, if indeed it is looking to boost infrastructure development for accelerated growth in 2012 – 2013, should as a matter of urgency focus on salvaging the more than 200 significant projects and programs that are stalling because of a lack of attention from the respective ministries and departments.

“It is clear that the spokespersons of the government of Ghana by their omissions and commissions have misinformed and mis-educated Ghanaians, not IMANI.”

IMANI noted that “as a patriotic think tank, fearlessly standing up for the national and public interest, we wish the government of Ghana and His Excellency the President very well in their endeavours. But our foremost loyalties are to the good people of Ghana. Our credibility is intact.”