..: THANK GOD, THERE IS A WORLD BANK!
Frank Q. Antwi-Barfi,
Financial Planner,
Chicago, USA

I just cannot resist responding to Mr. Nkansah’s nonsensical article entitled: HIPC Is a Poison, in ghanaweb.com web page posted April 2, 2001. What do you, Mr. Nkansah, have to say to the people who ran our country down the drain? Without the World Bank and its affiliates, what is our alternative? If you bear any grudge please do not turn it on NPP, rather be prayerful that sensible and educated and dedicated people are ready to help to turn the country around economically.
I would be willing to bet you a million cedis; Mr. Nkansah that you have scarcely had a personal financial plan prepared for yourself or your family. And yet you are complaining about various plans that the World Bank and its affiliates have put together to rescue Ghana from many discredited economic theories practiced on us. The World Bank developed the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) in response to Ghana’s economic collapse resulting from Dr. Nkrumah’s ill-advised central-economic planning theory followed by Ft. Lt. Rawlings’ lack of understanding of the SAP and ERP strategies to transform Ghana back to a market-based economy. (It seems the World Bank has become synonymous with third World Leaders as the Bankruptcy Court is to people and corporate entities who run into financial malaise).
There were people in Ghana, including some that took power with force even though they did not possess any unique talents to offer to improve the development and welfare of the country. Now we can say for sure that they have left a record of economic destitution for Ghana. But at the same time they and their associates have enriched themselves. (Ghana Million-Dollar Game: Take over the Government by force, transfer financial assets to self and associates, leave the country poorer and negotiate to transfer government power back)
People who openly called themselves socialists (central economic planners) became the implementers of the World Bank programmes to aid Ghana to convert back to a market oriented economy. It is not very long ago that the whole world witnessed what such similar people did to Russia (USSR). In my lifetime, I have observed people who had no meaningful assets to begin their public life but became rich after associating themselves with certain political persuasions. How else is it that since our independence, people who took political power by force ended up at the end of their tenure much richer but leave the country much poorer? You know them, yet you are afraid to question their integrity.
I further challenge you, Mr. Nkansah, that you have scarcely seen a copy of any of the World Bank’s programmes, not to mention taking the wherewithal to analyze them. If the people you are reluctant to mention by name had followed the strategies proposed by the World Bank and its affiliates, Ghana would have been many times a better place. Now, what do we have? Some people who had no prior assets before coming into political power are now the elite in our society. The result and the insult are that even their spouses who never received a salary from gainful employment are now millionaires.
Any financial plan (programmes) is only as good as the people implementing it. In my opinion, the biggest mistake the World Bank representatives made was that they did not adequately evaluate some of the former Ghanaian leaders’ capability and competency to carry out the programmes.
Mr. Nkansah, what do you have to say to our former leader who ruined our currency. During his stewardship the value of our currency dropped from three cedis to a dollar down to 7,000 cedis to a dollar. Granted that all industrialized countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have devalued their currencies in my life time but they did it according to plan.
Mr. Nkansa, let us all be vigilant and watch and question those who seek to run our country either by desire or by force.