The Jubilee 2000 Movement on Saturday said the humiliation Finance Ministers of countries implementing the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) faced was sufficient lesson for them to rethink how their countries could generate their own resources for development.
Mr Akoto Ampaw, a member of the Movement, who said this at a Socialist Forum in Accra under the topic “18 Months After Opting for HIPC – Impact and Prospects,” advised that, “Solutions to Ghana’s economic problems were right here in the country.”
Mr Ampaw said at the Paris Club, the finance ministers were asked to defend their reports, which were prepared by agents of their creditors. “The ministers must defend the reports as individuals facing a host of creditors in an assembly as to whether the conditions of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were fulfilled.
He said the decision as to whether a debtor country had passed the test and that he would be given additional loans was always taken in the absence of the ministers. Mr Ampaw said thereafter, the ministers were given the green light to meet the London Club where the financial institutions were.
He said “it was left to those entrusted with the responsibility of governing the country to rethink and redirect their efforts at nation building instead of reducing their citizens to perpetual beggars.” “With HIPC we are only postponing our indebtedness to the future while we continue to contract more loans,” he asserted.
Mr Ampaw said, “There was nothing to be proud of and to make fanfare about the 117 billion cedis Ghana had from HIPC and the fact that each district assembly was to be given one billion cedis for poverty reduction.
“If anything at all it was only to serve as a propaganda or campaign gimmicks aimed at telling the people that HIPC was good and that they were given money from HIPC,” he noted.
Mr Ampaw said if Ghana continued to adhere to HIPC, in the next five to 10 years, the country’s debt would keep on rising as it was in the case SAP, which has led the NPP government to declare the country HIPC.
He noted that most countries operated their economies on credit while those of the advanced Western world had solid economic position and sold their products to developing countries at high price.
Mr Ampaw said products of developing countries were under-valued and attracted low earnings leading to trade deficit. He, therefore, appealed to developing countries to judiciously exploit their resources to the benefit of the people.
Mr Ampaw said if Ghanaian professionals like engineers, atomic physicists, economists, and artisans were assisted, they could contribute the development of the country.
Source: GhanaWeb
