Former Cal Bank CEO Frank Adu Jnr has bewailed the devastating impact of procurement fraud on Ghana’s economy, describing it as one of the country’s most corrosive problems.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, June 30, he stated, “This country has, as far as I am concerned, two problems; you have the political system and corruption.”
He added that if former President John Mahama is able to confront corruption head-on, including holding his own appointees accountable, he would send the right signal and potentially restore confidence in the system.
To illustrate the scale of the problem, Mr Adu Jnr shared a personal example from his time as CEO of Cal Bank.
“A client of ours brought a contract. I’m not going to say which government. So, the client needed the equivalent of $3 million to finance a contract, and we looked at it and financed it.
“Between the time of ordering the product, etcetera, and delivery, there was what they call a variation, and government accepted the variation. When the client was paid, he was paid the equivalent of $25 million…eight times the amount.”
He emphasised the systemic nature of the problem, warning that no economic policy could survive such abuses.
[embedded content]“It doesn’t matter how good your finance minister is, doesn’t matter how good the president is. There is no way that you can deal with an eight times increase in the price of any product.
“And it wasn’t an isolated incident… and it continues up to today. So, procurement fraud is critical. It’s killing this country.”
Mr Adu Jnr insisted the problem transcended political regimes.
“We’ve seen it all over the place. I don’t want to give examples that would place blame on any particular government, but it goes on.
“So that kind of corruption, there is no amount of IMF intervention or good governance by the finance minister, which is going to curb this.”
He called for decisive leadership, saying, “Until President Mahama decides that, look, I’m going to make sure that these things don’t happen, we’re going to have this problem going on.”
Addressing the culture of political reward, he criticised the current lack of meritocracy.
“The more noise you make whilst in the position, the likely, the chance, your chance of becoming a CEO or ambassador or a minister or something like that. That is not a meritocracy.”
He concluded with a harsh assessment of public sector performance.
“Once you have a situation like that, then it’s going to be very difficult for the government in power to perform.
“If you are not held to account for your deeds as a minister or as a political appointee, it means that you can underperform. And that happened under Akufo-Addo. You take the SIGA companies, all these parastatals — which one of them performed? Maybe SIC, they paid dividends, etcetera.”
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