Your past prescriptions haven’t helped developing countries – TOR MD tells IMF

Mr Edmond Kombat, the Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery Limited (TOR), has challenged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over its long-standing prescriptions for state-owned enterprises.

He noted that the Fund appears to be revising its literature because its past advice “hasn’t helped” developing countries.

Mr Kombat was responding to a question on the reason for the recent visit by a delegation from the IMF to the state-owned Oil Refinery, at the Government Accountability Series Press Conference held at the Presidency in Accra.

Mr Kombat said the Fund had written extensively about Ghana’s energy sector, including TOR.

He traced the country’s history with IMF-backed programmes—from the Economic Recovery Programme to the Financial Sector Recovery Programme and the Divestiture of State Enterprises—and observed that the Fund had traditionally promoted private business and “usually they don’t like state entities running businesses.”

“But it looks like they are changing their literature, because most of those prescriptions that they give actually haven’t helped the developing countries,” he said.

He said in Ghana, state-owned enterprises were beginning to show that state institutions could work and work very well.

“And we were happy to receive them and show them that under His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama, state entities are working, and are working profitably, and are not the lost making entities,” Mr Kombat added.

He noted that the IMF delegation seemed impressed, reiterated that “but we also remain guarded.”