BRAVO, SAM JONAH - TSATSU TSIKATA DESERVES PRAISE INDEED!

Mr. Sam Jonah is right to praise Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata – but with respect, it is not enough merely for Ghanaians to praise Tsatsu: and leave it at that.

Perhaps our many brilliant economists could also tell us, whether our country's economy would collapse, if the government was visionary enough to put him in charge of a task force, to facilitate the setting up of a new state-owned oil giant – by merging the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), the state-owned oil marketing company Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL), and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), with a view to enabling Ghana refine all the oil it produces?

Naturally, it would also make sense to set up gas liquefaction plants too – to enable us export a broad range of petroleum products (including liquefied gas) throughout Africa: starting with West Africa.

If the new oil giant were to be structured so that the management and workers owned 20 per cent of the company, whiles the government and Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) took up 60 per cent of the shares (and converted the TOR debt to GCB into stock in the new company, that way!), and 20 per cent was floated on the Ghana Stock Exchange, for ordinary citizens wishing to invest in the new company to do so, would it not ensure maximum productivity and good management, dear reader?

By going into joint-venture partnerships with the best-resourced Chinese state-owned oil and natural gas companies, which are world class and class-leading in their individual sectors in China, could we not empower the new oil giant to build additional oil refineries, sufficient to enable Ghana refine every drop of oil it produces (ditto natural gas) – so that we can actually derive maximum benefit from that gift of nature: and use the money we make to help transform our country into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia?

Surely, Ghane could pay for all the new refinery plants by giving China our soveriegn bonds - redeemable against future oil and natural gas revenues?

Bravo Mr. Jonah - Tsatsu Tsikata does indeed deserve to be praised for his contribution to strengthening the GNPC.


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