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Nearly three years and a half and counting, we are still skirting around the real issues surrounding the $3bn Chinese Development Bank Loan. The president just sent another team to China to work on the loan. Sometime in 2011, government officials lined up to insult IMANI for suggesting that we needed to understand the mores of the lender and doubting whether the loan � hailed by the government as the best thing ever to happen to Ghana � was going to be a panacea to the nation's infrastructural challenges. 'What IMANI set out to do was to examine one dimension of the loan process: actual amounts of disbursement from the point of view of the lender, the China Development Bank. This is something that had not been done to date and having discerned some of the patterns behind their lending strategy, we felt it was important to share our findings with the general public, especially with regard to how such a strategy is likely to align or misalign with the short-term policy vision of the government.' IMANI also questioned the viability and profitability of several of the projects the $3bn was to be spent on. William Yaw Owusu of the Daily Guide reported "Moments after the release, the government's communicators took turns to run down the report. Koku Anyidoho, Director of Communications at the Presidency, said the researchers have been paid to down play the $3 billion Chinese loan while Stan Dogbe, a presidential staffer, who recently cashed GH�169,000, equivalent to �1.6 billion cedis to buy hampers and organize seminars for journalists on the 2010 Budget, said IMANI was being mischievous in a bid to satisfy their paymasters to block the facility. Fifi Kwetey, a Deputy Minister of Finance said 'listening to IMANI president Franklin Cudjoe's arguments seeking to portray IMANI as an organization out to do an independent work betray a certain remarkable affinity to some of the things NPP clearly has been doing.' Kwadwo Twum Boafo, CEO of the Ghana Free Zones Board, said IMANI should simply declare themselves appendages of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), adding, 'I cannot understand how a supposedly credible think tank can caution the government premised on falsehood.' Sedina Tamakloe Attionu, CEO of the Ghana Youth Authority, described IMANI as a leaking tank and not think tank. However, IMANI has said it is not perturbed by the barrage of insults heaped on them by the presidential spokespersons and reaffirmed that their credibility is intact." Three years on and counting.....we are still searching for the magic.......Buffon Republic!