World Bank, IMF not reliable institutions – Kwesi Pratt

With the passage of the Electronic Transactions Levy (E-Levy), arguments on whether or not the country should still pursue the option of either going to the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been shot down by the Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr.

According to the veteran journalist, it is sickening for him when he hears people who are authorities on the economy pushing for such a move.

He explained that this is because historically, going to either of the institutions has not inured to Ghana’s benefit positively, describing it as a ‘useless’ venture.

“I’m also particularly alarmed at the over-simplification of the options before us. I get sick when I listen to big men with big credentials in the management of the economy and so on and they come to us and tell us that the option really is about going to the World Bank and the IMF, or not going to the World Bank or the IMF.

“That’s sickening; that’s over simplification. Is that our problem? The problem is much more than going to the World Bank and the IMF or not going to the World Bank and the IMF. In any case, if we make recourse to history, going to the IMF has been useless in dealing with the problems that confront us,” he said.

Speaking on Wednesday, March 30, 2022, edition of Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV, and monitored by GhanaWeb, Kwesi Pratt Jnr recalled how and why he is unhappy about such options being made for the country’s economy.

He said that the unreliable assessment of both the World Bank and IMF in the past doesn’t make them institutions that Ghana should be relying on.

“I recall that Ghana was the star pupil of the World Bank and the IMF… until January 2001, when President Kufuor won the elections, then the country representatives of these institutions wrote a letter to the incoming president and said the economy is in shambles, and everybody was shocked. We [were] told all the time that we’re doing well and everybody should copy us, a new president is elected and within months or days, we are now told the economy is in total shambles.

“And then they started telling us that President Kufuor was doing well with the HIPC initiative, everything was fine and so on until President Mills won the elections in 2008, and within a few days, the same people had written a letter to President Mills, telling him about the precarious nature of the national economy, and it goes on and on.

“So, these are not institutions that we should be relying on,” he said.