Is Ghana Interested In Creating Its Own Billionaires?

One of the most poorly investigative piece of journalism on the activities of Subah Infosolution, made the headlines last week, and it has gain momentum this week as well. This piece could best pass for arm chair journalism, and this was done by a one-time journalist of the year. Over the weekend, the Ministry of Finance issued a statement on the issue, saying the Minister of Finance, since May this year, had directed the tax policy unit of the Ministry and the Ghana Revenue Authourity (GRA), to stop their monthly payment to Subah Infosolution. According to the statement signed by a Deputy Minister of Finace, Casley Ato Forson, his outfit has commissioned a team to review the agreement between GRA and Subah Infosolution. The question that begs asking is that since May when the agreement was halted, how are we as a country monitoring call traffic of telephone service providers and how much are the telecos paying? We can continue to be shooting ourselves in the foot by promoting foreign businesses, while we kill local initiatives. The amount of money the Government of Ghana was making through the GRA, until the engagement of Subah was nothing to write home about, whiles the telecommunication companies were raking in millions of Ghana cedis, which they repatriat out of the country on daily basis. It is no wonder we are still struggling to contain the free fall of the Cedi against its major trading currencies, especially the United States Dollars. A local company was engaged to help block the leakage and our problem is that they are paid too much. So if it was a foreign company then nobody will be bothered about how much we pay them every month, but because it is an indigenous company let deny them their side of the bargain. If we are serious about building local capacity, then we should be prepared to treat our own, the way we will treat any national. All the sectors of the economy is dominated by foreigners, even the retail sector that has been reserved for Ghanaians is now largely dominated by foreigners. The mining sector is owned by foreigners, all the major hotels and restaurants we have in this country are foreign owned. The timber industry is dominated by foreigners, what sector of the economy do we control, except the Presidency. We cannot eat our cake and still have it. are we not interested in also producing billionaires. Are we not interested in having our Dangote, or Mike Adenuga, or Donald Trump, or Bill Gate, just to mention but a few. The way we are going, we are only killing initiative and innovation. Government must not also fall for this pranks and sabotage. This is a hatchet job done for some people to continue to evade tax and take us for a ride. What kind of investigative piece, will not give relevant agencies in the deal the opportunity to respond. If the young man was interested in knowing the truth, why not talk to the telecos, the GRA, the Ministry of Communication and most importantly Subah, who are in the center of it all. Samuel Agyeman must come again.