It’s a very busy political week for global politicians and journalists alike at the start of spring. Ghana’s new government is busy getting its house in order; South Africans are gearing up for general elections; and elsewhere global leaders are busy renewing partnerships and trying to make progress in solving the problems of the world.
I have been enormously overwhelmed by the grand showing of President Obama’s London visit for the G20 summit – Accompanied by 500 staff- you can’t help but salute the Americans and you can understand why some analysts are pointing to America to lead the way in providing solutions for the recession. They have the money to burn and the rest of us don’t.
Rising demand and constrained supply has dragged the price of crude oil on the global stage. The constrained supply came about because it is only OPEC that is currently supplying crude oil. The IEA –International Energy Agency, which produces more than a third of the world’s crude, has scaled down its supply by 380, 000 barrels a day in order to boost the price of crude. The IEA wants the prices to go up. Global oil supply started going down since February and we all know what a decline in supply means.
There are serious implications with regards to the position taken by the IEA. What it means to the world and especially our country is that, if the group cuts further oil supply, it would make any chances of a quick recovery from the meltdown more difficult, prices would escalate and obviously Ghana would be hard pushed to further increase fuel prices.
Economic growth in developing nations would fall by 2%, according to the World Bank which also predicts that “economic activity will remain depressed for the next two years”. The world is in a financial crisis; we are in enormous economic times.
Let us not downplay the effects of these increases in fuel prices on motorists and the strain it has on our fledgling economy. Businesses in our country would feel the heat. The impact on jobs and expansion of businesses cannot be underestimated. It could see companies with a large fleet of vehicles taking some of the vehicles off the road or axing jobs.
But to seek to blame the increases on the government is not only disingenuous but treasonable. The overzealous Member of Parliament for Abuakwa South, Atta Akyea described members of the ruling party as deceitful and liars. He’s obviously living up to the meaning of his name, which is to bend and twist the truth and he is doing so to raise his own stature in his party as an outspoken and hardworking MP and to score very cheap political points. Unfortunately, it shows how wet behind the ears he is.
Atta Akyea has attacked the ruling government for increasing fuel prices less than a month after a reduction. The honourable MP would do his credibility and his badly mauled party a lot of good if he could tell us how much the price of fuel was on the world market at the time of the reduction and what his party - which damaged our country’s image by its tolerance of corruption and drugs, mismanaged the economy and left it near bust in the last 8 years- would have done under the circumstance? In every serious nation, prices of fuel go up and down at the behest of world crude prices and the honourable MP knows that. As I write now (April 1, 2009), the UK has announced an increase in fuel prices by an extra 2.12p per litre and this could be replicated in countries all over the world by the time you read this.
I do not intend to go into the litany of the lies and deceit his party peddled throughout the last 8 years they were in government. Our people are in great difficulty and need all the help they can get. The opposition would do the nation a lot of good if it engaged in acts and debate that would see our country recover from the shocks of the recession.
This is just not the time for playing politics. The economies of bigger and smaller nations alike are in a slump and this is about people’s livelihoods, bread and butter politics and the focus and responsibility of any politician should be how to get back the economy on track, keep the pay checks flowing and businesses running. To borrow words from Barack Obama, this is a “time for greater cooperation” and not finger pointing. After all, it was the opposition New Patriotic Party that further weakened our economy so badly even before the recession and lied about the economy being in greater shape.
The Mills led government has a lot of work to do, not least to get the economy back on track. It must endeavour to be proactive and counteract the tricks of the likes of Ata Akyea. In these unprecedented economic times, the government can only be truthful with the facts about the state of the economy and the difficult choices it would have to make to steer us into calm waters.
Credit: Ras Mubarak [mmubarak79@yahoo.com ]
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