Read How the “IMF and USA set to ruin Ghana” — Former British Ambassador Craig Murray writes

                                                  Former British Ambassador Craig Murray (right)

  Ghana used to have the most reliable electricity supply in all of Africa and the highest percentage of households connected to the grid . The Volta River Authority, the power producer and distributor was the most efficient public utility in all of Africa. Indeed it was truly world class, which Ghana was proud of it.


Obviously the introduction of truly public owned and run enterprise was a disaster  to the neo-liberal ideologues of the IMF and World Bank. When Ghana needed some temporary financial assistance the IMF insisted that VRA be broken up. Right wing neoliberal dogma was applied to the Ghanaian electricity market.
Electricity was separated between production and distribution, and private sector Independent Power Producers introduced. The result is disaster. There are more power cuts in Ghana than ever in its entire history as an independent state. Currently Ghana is producing just 900 MW of electricity – half what it could produce ten years ago. This is not the fault of the NDC or the NPP. but  the fault of the IMF.

Those private sector Independent Power Producers actually provide less than 20% of electricity generation into the grid – yet scoop up over 60% of the revenues! The electricity bills of Ghanaians go to provide profits to fat cat foreign corporations and of course the western banks who finance them.


Indeed in thirty years close experience the net result of all IMF activity in Africa is to channel economic resources to westerners – and not to ordinary western people, but to the wealthiest corporations and especially to western bankers.

 The IMF and the USA are now insisting on the privatization of ECG, the state utility body which provides electricity to the consumer and bills them. The rationale is that a privatized ECG will be more efficient and ruthless in collecting revenue from the poor,  hospitals, clinics, schools and other state institutions.

 It will of course be more efficient in channeling  more profits to very rich businessmen and bankers. That privatised utilities bring better service and cheaper prices to the consumer has not been the case in the UK. What it does bring is huge profits to the rich and misery to the poor. To unleash this on Ghana is acutely morally incorrect.


Ghana has a political culture in which the two main parties, NDC and NPP, heatedly blame each other for their country’s problems. But if they only can see it, in truth the electricity sector has been ruined by their common enemy – the IMF and World Bank. I pray that one day the country will escape the grip of these bloodsucking institutions.




Credit: craigmurray.org.uk

Source: http://www.manassehazure.com/2015/07/imf-and-usa-set-to-ruin-ghana-former-british-ambassador-craig-murray-writes/