GAT Secretly Squeezed Through Parliament After A ‘Hurried Haircut’…NDC and NPP Parliamentarians Complicit

The Government has successfully pushed through Parliament, its unpopular move to use the Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) to acquire shares in the five banks that GAT was set up to babysit.

According to sources familiar with happenings, the successful passage was done secretly after the Majority NPP MPs in Parliament had enlisted the support of the Minority MPs in a cloak and dagger collaboration that stabbed the back of their colleague for Bolga Central, Isaac Adongo.

Whatsup News gathered from unverified sources that some money may have changed hands to influence both sides of the legislature to push the GAT through, particularly having vehemently expressed opposition to the move earlier.

It would be recalled that Hon. Adongo went to court in late March 2019, in response to a decision by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, to muster Sovereign Guarantee with which to borrow money that can be used to buy shares in the five banks.

The banks are the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), Prudential Bank (PB), Universal Merchant Bank (UMB), Sahel Sahara/Omni Bank and the National Investment Bank (NIB).

Hon. Adongo had gone to court on the grounds that the Finance Minister’s move to use borrowed capital to buy shares in the banks is expressly against the Act 930.

He is seeking for an injunction on the whole process and “a declaration that the agreements and arrangements between the 2nd Defendant (GAT) and each of the selected local banks whereby the 2nd Defendant purports to use borrowed funds to purchase the shares of each of the selected banks is illegal as it contravenes section 9(d) of the Banks and Specialized Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930).”

Apparently, the government realized that the Adongo suit was a serious blow that could not be easily surmounted in court and so the cloak and dagger move to secretly make alterations to the original request to Parliament on GAT.

It was then sent to Parliament in an envelope that was marked “secret” for passage. According to reports, the new GAT Bill with a ‘hurried hair cut’ was passed before Parliament would rise for recess during the Christmas break. And it was done apparently, on the blind side of Hon. Adongo.

The main alteration made to the original Bill was that, rather than using Sovereign Guarantee to borrow money from the money market, the government will now take pension funds from SSNIT to fund the share acquisition.

Interestingly, the same Ofori-Atta who is now seeking to use government workers’ pension money to fund these share acquisitions had, before the abortive resort to sovereign guarantee attempted to use this same pension funds but had had to quickly drop the idea because the Trades Union Congress (TUC) had bared its fangs.

Curiously, SSNIT owns shares in ADB and NIB, therefore, the Government taking pension money from it to buy shares in these banks means using SSNIT’s own money to buy shares in its own bank.