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30.11.2010 General News

John Mahama: No Oil For Cash

30.11.2010 LISTEN
By Daily Guide

­­ The Vice President, John Dramani Mahama, literally took a leaf from former US President George W. Bush's book when the former used the word 'baloney' to show his disagreement over an ongoing national issue.

Mr. Mahama described as 'foolish and baloney' the moves to prevent the amendment of the Petroleum Revenue Management bill currently before Parliament to allow the State to use the expected oil revenue as collateral for securing loans for the country.

When President Bush was asked about alleged US intention to build a military base on the African continent, during a state visit to Ghana in 2007, he said, 'This is baloney as we say in my home state Texas.'

According to Vice President Mahama, in the face of infrastructural challenges of the country, it would be unwise not to amend the bill to allow government to use petroleum resources as collateral for loans.

"It is not done anywhere and it will be the most foolish thing for us to do,' he explained.

The bill itself, DAILY GUIDE learnt, was withdrawn yesterday for the Attorney General to re-work on it, following over 100 proposals submitted to amend it.

The vice president, who was addressing National Democratic Congress (NDC) student members at Winneba over the weekend, expressed surprise that the minority NPP was against any attempt to collateralize the oil revenue, with the excuse that 'oil is a blessing and that it shouldn't be collateralized in advance. What the hell!'

Mr. Mahama also took on NDC members who have been criticizing the Mills administration for providing ammunition for their opponents.

The amendment, according to sources, would allow the NDC government to push the STX Korean deal on a fast lane to allow the agreement to be signed.

'In clause 5 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Bill, it says that the oil wealth cannot be used as collateral to raise credit. And suddenly our brothers in the NPP are supportive of this.

I know that in drafting this bill, we received help from some Norwegian experts. I have spoken to them and they said that at the time they drafted their bill, they had their entire infrastructure in place so they didn't need to collateralize the oil wealth.

'But we live in a country where women are dying because the road from their villages to a health facility is not done, and you say that the oil wealth God has blessed us with should be left for generations to come while that woman dies today because she can't go to the hospital? Excuse my language, but that is absolute baloney,' he said.

'We have a huge infrastructural deficit. People need water, electricity and health facilities to keep them alive and God has given us opportunity to give them such infrastructure and we want to wait for the oil to continue dripping for one year. It is not done anywhere and it will be the most foolish thing for us to do,' he stated.

Reacting to the concerns raised by Vice President Mahama, the Minority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, said the vice-president got it wrong because it was not only NPP MPs who were against the amendment of the Bill.

He said countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Mexico, UAE, Nigeria, Gabon amongst others 'who have done this, have realized that it is not good to do this and are pulling out.'

'If we allow for oil-backed loans, we will be abandoning whatever participatory and consultative arrangement that must be observed in order to ensure prudent management of the petroleum revenue,' Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu told Joy Fm yesterday.

He said the bill in question was submitted to Parliament by the executive, wondering the haste for the amendment.

Several civil society members have kicked against the collateralization of oil revenue.

Former deputy Energy Minister and Member of Parliament for the Adansi Asokwa, K.T. Hammond also reiterated the need for the country to reconsider the total amount of oil reserve it has before thinking of collateralizing the yet-to-be-drilled oil.

According to Mr. Hammond, government was jumping the gun by thinking of using the revenue from the oil resources as collateral for loans to undertake infrastructural development.

The former deputy Energy Minister thinks collateralizing the oil could be detrimental to the country.

'If we want to make effective use of the money that we are going to get out of the oil, let's put it in a kitty so that whatever comes in we take it to somewhere. The oil thing is exhaustible and the prices are also not stable on the market.'

Hon. K.T. Hammond told Citi FM there were strong suspicions that government did not have the finances to fulfill its part in the STX Korea Housing deal, hence government's insistence on collateralizing the expected oil revenue.

This inability was what he believed had stalled the take-off of the housing project.

An NDC youth activist, Ras Mubarak, described the comments by the vice president on the cracks in the NDC as provocative.

To Mr. Mubarak, the internal incoherence the NDC was battling with on a daily basis should squarely be laid at the doorstep of the government's communication machinery, a department he thought was doing a rather shoddy job, giving the government's biggest opposition, the NPP, the leeway to punch holes in even the government's prudent achievements.

'I think the Vice President completely got it wrong, when he said our problems were our inability to articulate government's success story, and to build a media fire wall that would protect the government from hostile threats.

This is a communication team that has been unable to do that… This is a clear manifestation of how we want to glorify mediocrity, of how we do not want to ask the right question,' Ras Mubarak told XFM.

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