For the third time in less than 60 years, the Government of Ghana is reportedly on the verge of setting up a national airline. Reports from the Ministry of Transport hint at the imminent appointment of a Transaction Adviser to guide the process of the establishment of a new Ghana Air, after two previous failures.
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, our first President, created Ghana Airways in 1958, after he pulled out of the common West African Airways Corporation, jointly-owned and operated by the four British colonies of The Gambia, Gold Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Its successor, Ghana International Airlines, was established by the President John Agyekum Kufour administration, after the liquidation of Ghana Airways in 2005, but also ceased operations in 2010, crippled by financial crisis and equity disputes. It is claimed that in both instances the accumulated effects of mismanagement, exacerbated by corruption, nepotism and cronyism and overly-liberal ticketing privileges for government officials and staff, were responsible for the collapse of the two airlines.
Given this unedifying history, The Chronicle wonders whether this third attempt at floating a national airline, which has got to the stage of appointing a TA, is not a waste of resources and energy in times of belt-tightening. But, of course, we understand the disgrace attached to a country like Ghana having no national carrier or a telecommunications portal, when much smaller and less endowed countries have.
The reports say the TA, to be selected out of a field of six who applied, is expected to advise the government on the ownership structure, funding, business model, and routes of the new airline, which designed as a public-private partnership venture.
The Chronicle recalls that while Ghana Airways was 100 percent state-owned, the GIA was 70 /30 percent public-private partnership. We think the public-private equity gap in GIA was too wide, and could have contributed to its collapse, and to ameliorate that, we recommend a public-private ownership of 49 /51.
And, as is usual in business, the private investor who owns 51 percent majority shareholding would have management control. And he should not be a mere investor, but a Technical Partner who is already an industry player. In the opinion of The Chronicle, the bane of state-owned enterprises in the country, which has led to over 400 of them being run down and eventually sold to private investors, is the state management control, which politicians have almost always misused to put square pegs in round holes in management and on the board.
In both the days of Ghana Airways and GIA, reports abound of ministers and other public officials, whose tickets are bought on credit, insisting on flying first class, and crowding out cash-paying first class passengers. The ills that have plagued state-owned enterprises since 1966 will be cured by our ceding majority shareholding in the new national airline to the private technical investor.
Unless this is done, Ghana Airways Mark 3 is doomed to failure as its predecessors. And we will forever hang our heads in shame for not living up to Nkrumah�s credo that the African is capable of handling its own affairs.
<<Print>>