Legal practitioner, Dr. Justice Srem-Sai, has said that Ghana has become the poster child for major international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
According to him, these institutions use Ghana as a test country for their policies.
Speaking on Accra-based TV XYZ, he noted that this approach, even though it has some advantages, has never been beneficial to the country.
“We are now more like the poster child for the Bretton Wood Institutions; World Bank, IMF etc. The whole model of helping developing countries to come out of their poverty and become developed countries, Ghana is like the poster child for that project,” he said.
The NDC leader explained that being positioned as a model country for these institutions, when Ghana’s economy is not performing well, they offer other policies to cover up those weaknesses.
He explains that even while other countries find it hard to access funds from the Bretton Woods Institutions, Ghana gets easy access because the country is being used to test the viability of their policies.
“It has its own advantages such as it exposes the country to all of their products and policies. The other side which is negative is that, because we have been made like the poster child, they often don’t want us to fail or not let the reality show. Even when we are performing so poorly, as long as we are seen as good, the institutions and their policies are also good. So, they use us as a flagship cover while they hide our negative sides.
“When all other developing countries need money and they are not getting them from these institutions, Ghana shows up and they have no option than to give Ghana because if they don’t give us and we fail, it is as if their whole project has also failed. They use us as the justification for the policies which we all know are not solving our problems,” he noted.
The actions of the Bretton Wood Institution to Ghana, Dr Srem-Sai added, makes it hard to accurately portray the downsides of the economy.
“So, it is a challenge for you to actually portray the weaknesses in the Ghanaian economy and our institutions.,” he added.
