A Letter to Ghana Ministry of Finance – A Fistful of Dollars

Dear Mr. Seth Terkper,

Seth Terkper
Seth Terkper – Ghana’s Minister of Finance.

My office has been made aware that your outfit is in need of some 2.5 million dollars to resolve the current infrastructure deficit in Ghana.

My attention on this issue is firm. I am aware that Ghana is lagging in infrastructure development and that this gap is hampering efforts to expand the economy and romp up all sectors for sustainable development.

All reports submitted to my office show that you fully understand the problem. That you recognize how a well-organized infrastructure creates employment, boosts capital and how it promotes local and foreign exchange investments and enriching trade. You also seem to understand that this fuels businesses, helps raise the standard of living and improves access to critical services across the country.

By the estimates from your office, Ghana needs to spend at least 1.5 million dollars to close the current infrastructure gap in the deficit if any good, at all, is to come out of the current economic situation in the country. That of racketing unemployment rates, increasing poverty, high costs of living and dilapidating healthcare.

If you don’t mind me asking, do you need the money in dollars or in Ghana Cedis? By this, I want to know if you plan to use the money to plug the fast vanishing foreign reserves or if you plan to use the money to pay Ghanaians for their services and labor?

These are important questions your outfit should be exceedingly clear on. However, let us assume that you know exactly what you are doing and that you are actually going to use this money – in dollars – to obtain the much needed goods and services from abroad to bolster Ghana’s infrastructure.

Otherwise, I do not see how generating millions of Ghana Cedis in your own country is a problem in the 21st century.

So, how do you find this money?

I am here to provide you with an option. It is not exhaustive but you will find the money there. Or at the least this directs you in the proper place for some much needed cash. The ongoing third global conference on Public Private Partnership (PPP) in Takoradi in the Western Region might help you some, but in no way guides the necessary steps to obtaining this much needed cash – as you put it.

Ghana currently imports over 50,000 vehicles a year. That number is besides the number of vehicles brought in by car manufacturers like Toyota and Honda. On average, by all estimates researched, the tariff at the Port in Tema alone for each vehicle imported amounts to a sumptuous 2570.51 dollars.

Put together, in a year, Ghana makes more than 128 million dollars from the importation of vehicles for individuals and businesses. Either way, whether you need the money in Cedis or dollars, there you have it.

This amounts to about 11 million dollars a month in revenue. Altogether showing that Ghana makes 2.5 million dollars a week from the importation of vehicles alone. Did you say you needed 2.5 million dollars?

The Port of Tema can show you the money.

Do not tolerate any of the Port Authority Officers who might claim they don’t have the money. If you can’t find their bank accounts in Ghana where the money might be lurking, you can trace their accounts abroad. The money will be there.

These people are not smart enough to man a port, how much more hide bank accounts in the United States? They have the money. And you should already know that – if you don’t already have much of Ghana’s money stashed away in France.

Please allow me to come back to the point I was making that Ghana makes 2.5 million dollars a week from the importation of vehicles alone. There is a possible issue. It is an issue if your revenue is in Cedis, but you need the money in dollars.

Why then should you continue to collect tariffs in Ghana Cedis at the port? Why would you collect Ghana Cedis for imports, when you can’t seem to come up with a meagre 1.5 million dollars of foreign reserves?

Here is the fix if you really can’t find this money anywhere else.

You should have no need to reach out to the IMF or the World Bank. You should know by now that these organizations are cheats – they dupe the ordinary Ghanaian, because you and your ministry, the Ghana Ministry of Finance, cannot seem to comprehend their stratagems.

Instead of collecting Ghana Cedis for each vehicle imported – and you should consider this for those vehicles imported by manufacturers too – what you need to do is collect foreign currency. For example, if anyone chooses to export a car from the United States to Ghana, they must also foot the Tema Port tariff through the Ghana Embassy in dollars.

The Ghana Embassy in Washington, D.C., can keep a United States account in the name of Tema Port. In which case, all tariffs for such vehicle importations into Ghana can be kept safe and accounted for. Easily, Ghana can obtain 2.5 million dollars in a week. Not bad.

Consider replicating this idea across the board for all imported goods. From China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and so on. Not bad, right? Your government and the people of Ghana will soon be swimming in fistfuls of dollars. Your headaches will soon be over.

One more thing. Make sure you and your fellow ministers of state keep your hands out of the national coffers. This new organizational structure will bring in huge amounts of foreign currency. You must make sure the coffers does not become the private property of parliamentarians, ministers, judges, speakers and the president.

However, if the kleptomaniacs among you are brave enough, well note, that I will lead the people of Ghana against you, the Ghana Ministry of Finance and the rest of you all. We will catch you – one by one – and that day might even be branded the Second Coming of Junior Jesus.

Ghanaians have had enough. People like you obviously have shown little for the brains that God gave you; you have shown very little brawn, nor have you shown that you possess the fortitude to restrain your greed and petty tribalism. Again, Ghanaians have had enough. Stay off their money.

Follow these instructions, and the people of Ghana, will praise you. Help them, and they will lift you up into the skies. Don’t wait for your peers; don’t wait for an audience; do not wait for a sign in the sky; and do not wait even for inspiration; dedicate yourself to this vision to turn Ghana into a massive economy.

Let The Ancestors be your motivation. Let them be your shield. Then you will stand in the hall of The Gods; and the world will know your name; for you will burn with the stars of the night.

Yours Sincerely,

Narmer Amenuti.

8 COMMENTS

  1. Well, I hope Mr. Seth Terkper reads this. But I doubt it. Most African leaders don’t read anything anyways. Hopefully, the next Minister of Finance can think in innovative ways. This is the point of this letter – which I find amusing and poignant.

  2. Mr Terkper is as clueless as the beginning of time. I don’t know how you become a minister but the issue at stake in Ghana has always been, that our leaders are clueless. How would I know that Ghana made this much money in importation tariffs alone? It beats me why we are still suffering.

  3. Thanks Amenuti. The ongoing problem in African leadership is the inability to think and be creative. Mr Seth Terkper is not going to be very happy with that indictment, but all the same, you make an important point in almost all of African leadership – no vision, no innovation, no intellect even. And quite frankly, no sense of pragmatism. I really appreciate your honest approach to such African issues as these. It is tough to speak one’s mind in a climate of agism, vindictiveness and tribalism.

  4. Massive letter. Did Seth Terkper request 2.5 Billion or Million? Ataa Naa Nyongbor ee!! Well, let see how he gets the money. With this much money being made the ports in Tema and Takoradi, we have to ask the Ghanaian leadership where all this money goes. Maybe it’s time to start enforcing a transparent accounting book of government where all Government expenses and revenues are clearly drawn for the masses to scrutinize. That would make for an interesting Democracy. Wouldn’t it?

  5. Akosua M. Abeka, Narmer Amenuti and Solomon Azumah-Gomez you know for this kind of preaching against Ghana and African Elite and leaders not excluding myself you will have my support than ever because my life has wholey been committed to politico-economic studies of Africa and have several papers to that effect but most won’t listern why? because the failure of economic system is a booming business to their pocket.

    Just this coming Monday, I having a Press release in the name of my institution against the untouchable Bank of Ghana, on the fiasco nature of their current monetary and fiscal policy to kill businesses proven scientifically by my piece which again has a strong correlation to increase in unemployment today and the near future.

    Some TV-STATION are refusing to invite me on sensitive issues like this kind of challenges lamented above because they know I will expose the intellectual dishonesty in most of financial economics practice in Ghana.

    For the sake of posterity and the love for African economic freedom was the reason of our return to Africa. We have to even pay for the journalist to publish our press release to our credit most at time just to the benefit of mass consumption to exposed flaws, And never feel bad to do that because posterity will credit our effort one day.

  6. Much of the African leaders you see today are people who haven’t read a book since college graduation. Of course, they cannot think, envision or create. Yes it is a shame that you have to pay to get your thoughts out Tweneboah Senzu.

  7. Our media are split in a position that, they study your argument and is in favour of their grounds of perspective they will rush and publish your work without not your concern because it is in favour of a certain political circle argument. So funny.

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