Jöel

1. I just got reminded by @elliot_solution about an investigation I did years ago about SSNIT's IT platform, OBS, where I found that the contract sum was inflated by millions of dollars. 2. Elliot focuses on the fact that the IT manager was later prosecuted for, among others, totally forging his academic record (x.com/elliot_solutio…). Which is very interesting because it shows how poor attention to detail is in Ghana. Clearly, given how badly OBS was managed, the signs were always there? 3. The problem, of course, is that in Ghana, the elites focus on scandals & "corruption" when the real problem is their inability to invest any time to scrutinise policies & programs & push solutions to the problems at the root. "Corruption" is merely a symptom. By the time corruption actually manifests, many many things would have gone wrong long before. The deeper issue of why we can't nip corruption in the bud is policy-illiteracy, aka Katanomics. 4. Here is SSNIT again getting ready to splash almost $260 million on CENIT, a struggling power company that it owns. You will never hear any serious conversation about it anywhere. "Low-info elites," is what I call those who should be following & scrutinising such issues. 5. Re CENIT, SSNIT has barely made any money on the first power plant. After buying it for ~$91m and splurging more than $200m, it is doubtful that SSNIT has recovered even half that amount in a decade & half. 6. Because CENIT sits in an SPV structure, its books are opaque. But it features regularly in ECG debtor lists and one time it was flagged for dispatching virtually no electricity and relying on take-or-pay charges for income. 7. In no seriously managed fund would managers push to splurge another ~$260m on such an asset so another subscale plant can be built in Kumasi in a sector where the only buyer - ECG - constantly struggle to pay its bills. And preliminary investigations suggest that the plant may even be below spec. 8. In fact, if SSNIT was to follow the general investment guidelines in the pensions industry as set by regulation, it wouldn't be able to make further investments into CENIT because that would take it to roughly double the prudential limit. But SSNIT has long tried to operate outside the NPRA rules on the basis that it is special. 9. Now, I bring all this up to show that in a country where elites can't form a "critical policy audience" to dig into stuff like this & push back, how will focusing on "corruption" symptoms & shouting on radio about problems improve anything? 10. As we katanomists like to explain: "the devil is in the detail."

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