THE HOMEGROWN SOLUTION AGENDA: PART 1 By Marricke Kofi Gane

Dear Mr. Mr. & Mrs Ministers of Finance,

I am writing this short note to you because you have said you are working out innovative home-grown solutions to sustain our national finances, even though we cannot see anything still. I chanced on this opportunity that I had wanted to explore some time back, but in the interest of National Progress, you can have it. maybe let me start by saying this - it can never be homegrown. In the kind of world we live in where every country and every culture finds itself interwoven with many others even against their will, it will be misleading to tell us (well at least not all of us) that we can engineer an entirely "Home-Grown" economic revival. But anyway, I have some suggestions nonetheless....

There are hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians, even millions maybe, living abroad with PRIVATE pensions in those countries, or pensions run by their employer companies in those foreign countries. Those external countries, use these pension funds for development and investment many times over before the subscribers reach their pensionable age. The OPPORTUNITY however is this - it is possible for these pensions of the millions or thousands of Ghanaians abroad to be pooled together to improve our public Financial investment portfolio. The CAVEAT however is that whatever pension fund outside the current countries (e.g. USA or UK) that their pensions have to be transferred to, have to be "Qualified Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes" (QROPS). The conditions are mainly that the QROP has to meet about 10 basic organisational and operational conditions, have legislative backing and most importantly, have qualifying personnel to competently manage it. This assessment is carried out normally by the IRS of the countries that the pensions are currently being contributed in (e.g. USA). So far, there are just a few of these about QROPS in Africa, mainly in the Southern African region, so there is even scope to attract African Diasporan contributors other than Ghanaians who are happy to support Africa's development with their pensions, than other foreign countries. Currently, Africans with private pensions abroad, who wish to relocate back to Africa, do so without being able to relocate their private pensions with them - it almost happened to me.

Here is my suggestion - if you were to incorporate a wholly owned Public Limited Pensions and Annuity Company, with high calibre personnel such as we find in Databank, etc or even a Paid Foreign Pension Fund Manager, we stand a very high chance of getting a QROPS approval for such a company from USA, UK, Other Western nations (with the help of course of the Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh - maybe, just a tweet will do). Once done, the rest is really a matter of communicating, inspiring, advertising to Ghanaians abroad to move over their pension contributions into our Ghana Diaspora Pensions Limited (or any other name you choose to call it). In fact, you don't need to even set up a separate office to carry out the switch-overs in each country - simply assign a desk at the Ghanaian Embassies in each of these countries.

Now, let's bite the bullet of truth: Not an awful lot of Ghanaians will want to hand over their hard earned cash in private annuities or pensions to anyone that smells of government – only because, what is happening with SSNIT is obvious to all. So here is what I suggest in order that funds still flow into the local Ghanaian economy to help boost it. Instead of publicly owned, let's make it a private company with legislative backing and government holding only and up to 30% minority shareholding with no board of management representation and for half of its pooled funds to be invested in a Business Incubator Programme to farm wild but globally marketable entrepreneur ventures of Ghanaians via an outsourced venture management entity to be paid solely on successful business launch commissions. Hopefully the spill on profits from such venture enterprises can help support government's public funding in a non-evasive way. And I am not per se talking NDC. For me, the positive here is that is indeed "DOABLE" - The nitty gritties can always evolve in deliberations.

Done well, you will not only have unencumbered foreign contributions coming in, but they will both be long term, continuous, and best of all, there will be quite a lot of "Residual Pension Excesses" to be accrued resulting from dead contributors who have no next of kin (not that I wish it, but its reality, that will happen anyhow.

If taken serious, I am sure it will work for all of our good, if not, I am sure a private company out there will benefit from it - I am only sharing it with you because you have a greater leverage to make it work.

My little contribution to Ghana's purported Home Grown Economic Revolution. I first heard about "Home Grown Solutions" from the Deputy Minister of Finance Ms Quartey - Madam, I am still awaiting your first Home-Grown solution announcement. I hope you didn't mean IMF

Mr. Marricke Kofi Gane
[email protected]