The Conscience of the Market vs The Capture of the State

Ghanafuor, Adam Smith was wrong about one thing. It is not the invisible hand that governs markets. It is conscience — or the lack of it.

Consider two judgement debts, both born in July–September 2026, that together form a perfect moral and economic parable for our benighted Motherland Ghana.

I. The Rentier’s Prize: Teshie

A 60,000 cubic‑metre‑per‑day desalination plant was conceived in 2010 to solve Teshie‑Nungua’s perennial water crisis. Cost: $126 million under a 25‑year Build‑Own‑Operate‑Transfer Water Purchase Agreement signed in 2011. Structure: classic take‑or‑pay — Ghana Water must pay a fixed capacity charge even when it does not take the water.

Performance: In 2024, it averaged 72% of capacity — 43,009 m³/day — but the charge remained payable in full. By October 2025, Ghana Water shut it down.

Consequence: On 17 September 2026, two final ICC arbitral awards ordered Ghana Water to pay $235 million net of taxes to Befesa Desalination Developments Ghana Ltd, 95% owned by Spain’s Cox Infrastructure Group. The Republic is liable under a sovereign guarantee Parliament approved in 2012. Interest accrues from 1 April 2026. Ghana Water’s counterclaims, including one for $144.5 million, were substantially dismissed. The award — nearly twice the cost of construction — was disclosed in Madrid on 21 September.

We have therefore socialised the risk and privatised the profit. This is what economists call rentier capitalism. It is what Mancur Olson called institutional sclerosis — a state captured by contracts it does not understand. It is the antithesis of value for money.

Government’s response? On 23 September 2026, the Attorney‑General announced advanced negotiations to buy back the very plant we already guaranteed, to avoid paying the guarantee. We are negotiating to buy our own liability.

II. The Moral Economy: The GH¢79m Rejected

Contrast this with Accra High Court (Commercial Division 3). On 22 July 2026, Justice Doris Awuah Dabanka‑Bekoe ordered the Bank of Ghana to release GH¢79,651,132 from GRA’s refund account to Servistar Minwax (WA) Limited for overpaid import duties.

The facts are stark.
The director, Henry Manly‑Spain, petitioned the GRA Commissioner‑General on 1 August 2026:

“I write officially as Director, Servistar Minwax (WA) Limited, and a shareholder, to reject an amount of GH¢79,651,132 judgment debt payment.”

His documented claim? GH¢8.95 million — GH¢7 million for containers sold by GRA, GH¢940,000 in overpaid duties — which with interest, he says, should not exceed GH¢10 million.

He recounts discovering the inflated figure in court during a dispute between his lawyer and a Customs officer:

“He looked at me, I looked at him, and we both repeated the money, and I shook my head.”

He raised his hand to speak. The court said:

“No one is talking here. My decision is already written.”

His reason for rejection?

“My conscience will not allow it… I feel I am doing a great disservice first to God and secondly to the nation.”

This is what E.P. Thompson called the moral economy — the idea that economic transactions are embedded in moral norms. This is what Immanuel Kant meant by the categorical imperative: act as if your action could become universal law. If every Ghanaian businessman acted like Manly‑Spain, judgement debt would not be a cottage industry.

III. The Juxtaposition

Ghanafuor, seeing is believing — but conscience is proof.

In one case, a citizen audits himself and rejects GH¢69 million of unjust enrichment because the state cannot afford dialysis machines and incubators.

In the other, the state audits nothing, guarantees everything, and converts a $125m water solution into a $235m debt for water we no longer receive.

The first is an error of calculation that a conscience corrected. The second is a failure of statecraft that no conscience constrained at inception.

If a simple duty refund — verifiable from receipts — can be inflated nine‑fold from GH¢8.95m to GH¢79.65m without detection, what forensic scrutiny was applied to the Teshie termination payment formula, the capacity charge indexation, the sovereign guarantee?

This is public choice theory in action: concentrated private benefits, diffused public costs. The private party has every incentive to enforce; the public has no one to defend it — except a 74‑year‑old fogey who loves Ghana passionately and writes prolifically proffering creative nation‑building ideas, and a businessman who says “enough”.

So I ask: is the Teshie $235m award not yet another egregious, unconscionable rip‑off of our benighted Motherland Ghana?

And should the President not, as a matter of national pedagogy, confer a national honour on Henry Manly‑Spain — and order the Auditor‑General, with EOCO and the Attorney‑General, to publish and forensically audit every take‑or‑pay, guaranteed judgement debt contract binding the Republic?

Hmmm, 3y3 nsem piiii oooo, Ghanafuor. Eiiiii, Ghana!