It is a journey on a mummy truck. There is this driver who is a bit reckless that every passenger on board kept complaining. The road is good though, on the average it will pass for a good road. But over speeding, wrong overtaking, rearing offhis legal path and entering into the lane of on-coming vehicles and taking a longer time before changing the gear from first to second to third and to fourth.
Enough is enough, when the vehicle stopped over at a major terminal, the protests of all on board, made owners of that vehicle to change the driver and put a new one behind the steering wheel.
This new driver takes off with such professionality, driving like how very good drivers do. But for the occasional slips into pot-holes, everything was smooth. Even entering into these holes, the driver would slow down and went in so gently that the passengers will only feel a slight bump. Those who are sleeping, continue to sleep soundly as if they are laying on their own beds at home.
After fifteen kilometers, the good road ends and the mummy truck enters into a rough and bad road. Unfamiliar with the nature of that road, this good driver starts having challenges. Pot holes just popped up,out of emptiness, and the vehicle drops into them crudely and suddenly, shaking the bones and hearts of all on board. Suddenly the passengers turn against this driver whom they were just praising a while ago but are now describing him with words that cannot be repeated here. On board, even the previous reckless driver suddenly had mouth to talk.
No one compares how the first driver plied on a good road to how the second driver is doing on a bad road. The resolution is that the second driver is the worse ever and some people swore that he won his driver’s license at a betting shop.
This is all about finance ministers in Ghana in the last ten years. Hon Seth Emmanuel Terkper of the NDC was in charge of Ghana’s finances from 2013 to 2017. Even though there was no global economic crunch, Mr. Terkper took Ghana through tough times with the country going through three years of power outages which was christened Dumsor. Lots of businesses collapsed and many multinational companies relocated elsewhere. His own NDC colleagues in government and the NDC MPs appealed to then President John Mahama to remove him. H.E. Mahama threw away that appeal and stated that Seth Terkper was doing economics and not politics. So, Ghana remained in dire conditions with inflation rising year after year from 11.19% in 2012 to 17.45% in 2016.
In 2013, Hon Seth Terkper further saw to Ghana recording the highest trade deficit in the Fourth Republic when our trade deficit became -$6.21 billion.
The help of the IMF was sought and yet even under its supervision things were not going on well.
So, come 2016, Ghana took a decision. The NDC was removed and replaced by the NPP and in came an accountant called Ken Ofori Atta to manage our finances. He was the son of the only blue-blooded Akyem, Jones Ofori Atta, who decided to join the Victor Owusu led Popular Front Party (PFP), instead of joining his own brother, William Ofori Atta in his United National Convention (UNC).
Ken Ofori Atta, managed the economy so well and the country started recording gains. During his first year in office, inflation reduced from 17.45% (2016) to 12.37% in 2017. He then got Ghana to record single digit inflations from 2018 to 2021. And from 2020 to date, Ghana has been recording trade surpluses, the first ever in the Fourth Republic. While the Mills/Mahama administration of which finance minister Seth Terkper played a major role, recorded an average of -$4.552 billion trade deficit, the current Nana Akufo Addo government of which finance minister Ken Ofori Atta is an important part, is recording an average of -$25 million trade deficit.
All the same, irrespective of the global economic crunch which has settled on this earth for the past three years, Ghanaians are not too comfortable with Ken Ofori Atta. He is considered just as inefficient as the driver who plies through rough roads and cannot prevent the vehicle from landing heavily into pot holes.
So, the clarion call came that Ken Ofori Atta must go. His own NPP family members in Parliament, declared their desire to see Ken pack his bag and baggage and seen no more near the finance ministry or any other ministry.
The NDC saw this as an opportunity to make Ghanaians see that it as the political party who drove Ken Ofori Atta out of office. So, almost immediately after the NPP MPs made the announcement, the NDC MPs gathered behind microphones and also came out telling Ghanaians why and how Ken Ofori Atta should be kicked out.
It came to past, that the NPP MPs went to see the elders of the Party and were promised by the President, that after three major assignments, Ken Ofori Atta will go.
The NDC, still arrogant and headstrong, went ahead to drag Ken Ofori Atta into the village square with the intention of bombarding and embarrassing him with question to confirm to Ghanaians that he knows nothing. It rather turned out that it was the NDC MPs who were most ignorant about things. In some cases, Ken Ofori Atta took the trouble to inform them about how things are to be done in Parliament.
Down, but certainly not out, the NDC MPs decided that the only way to throw out Ken was through Parliamentary votes and there too, they lost.
One can say that it had clearly been displayed by the NDC that Hon Ken Ofori-Atta should remain in office. Well, after all, statistically and evidently he is better than all the NDC finance ministers in the Fourth Republic. In the NPP he might have challenges to attain the second position, but not in the NDC. Ken would have been its best ever finance minister.
All this while, the NPP MPs are expecting H.E. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo to back his words with action and make do his promise.
He had promised that he would get rid of Ken Ofori Atta after the minister had closed the IMF deal, had read the 2023 Budget and the Appropriation Bill had been passed.
All too soon, the IMF deal has finally been broken, and Ghanaians must expect the money coming in May this year. So, what is the fate of Ken Ofori Atta? Is he to go or not to go?
Ghanaians have every right to complain about these current economic hardships. And all such complaints fall at the doorsteps of the finance minister. Could he not have taken alternative routes out of this global mess? It has happened before in Ghana in 2007/2008 when the global economic meltdown seriously affected Ghana.
The finance minister at that time with directives from President Kufuor came out with measures to cushion the people of Ghana. In all this the Ghanaian cedi had only a marginal depreciation from GH¢0.91 to $1.00 to GH¢ 1.23 to $1.00. Yes, it was those times that with GH¢1,230.00 one could get a cool $1,000.00 and it was in an NPP era, so why is it different, today?
Taxes are very essential as major sources of revenue for governments and even President John Mahama advised Ghanaians not to complain about high taxes, because without these the country cannot be managed and developed.
Something about taxes is that it seems like only when people are broke that taxes are increased, and not the other way round.
Why is government not renovating and opening all toll booths for operations? I hear that GBC is no longer collecting TV license fees. And something interesting here is that the same people who are screaming that the taxes are too much are also asking why no toll booths and no TV license fees. When taxes come, they complain, when taxes are removed, they complain. And the beat goes on.
With taxes centred only on major institutions, companies and salary workers, the tax net is not spread out enough. Can’t government take a look at including every sector in the tax net? Can’t even the pure water seller be made to pay say GH¢5.00 a month and so also for the groundnut sellers and the kooko sellers? What about if waakye sellers and other cooked food retailers are made to pay GH¢15.00 a month and the chop bar operators saddled with paying at least the equivalent of five dishes of food every month?
If only every trader, businessman and all involved in one transaction or the other are made to pay affordable taxes, Ghana will be very rich and self-sufficient.
Even the NDC which claims to be on the side of the poor because it insists that is also poor, can easily afford to collect GH¢550,000.00 from presidential aspirants and GH¢55,000.00 from parliamentary aspirants, then Ghanaians cannot claim they have no money to give to the state and help in its development and progress.
All the same, the mummy truck is still on the road, that rough road full of manholes and what have you. The driver is very stiff at the wheels and oblivious of the cacophony of noises coming out from the lips of the passengers who are complaining about his driving. He just wants to get to the next station which is kilometers, away and until then, he will not be replaced.
And the question, still is, is Hon Ken Ofori-Atta to go or not to go? As for I am a very shy and quiet person, who does not talk much so I cannot volunteer any answer here. To go or not to go, is now the fate of KOA.
Hon Daniel Dugan
