Mr Speaker, Istrongly support the amendment.Sometimes I wonder the way we allassume. Would we remain poor? We arenot also thinking that a Ghanaian couldbe that rich and could establish acompany somewhere and therefore, wewould want to determine that a Ghanaiancould go to Nigeria, Morocco, London,America or Brazil to become a chiefexecutive? Mr Speaker, all round the world, thephenomenon is that, when shareholdersmeet, they decide who should be the headof their institutions. And they would nottake it kindly to just put anybody theresimply because some law says that onceone operates here, it could only be such aperson. When one does that, the investorwould say the world is a very big place,he quickly would shut down and collecthis capital out of the country. Mr Speaker, let us look at the other sideof it. We always look at it as if Ghanaiansare incapable of growing something tobecome bigger than even Ghana? We arein a competitive world. The Ghanaian whowould want to be a Chief Executive shouldbe able to be up to the task. There aremany Ghanaians who are serving otherbanks in other countries across Africa. MyColleague, Hon Akoto Osei just whisperedto me that Paa Kwesi Nduom is a ChiefExecutive in America. Mr Speaker, with the greatest ofrespect, please, let us allow thisamendment to stay. Like my Colleagueearlier said, one cannot like my money andwould not want me to benefit from certainrights. I would want to disagree with HonPapa Owusu-Ankomah, when he says itlacks policy direction. When you look at the explanatorymemorandum that accompanied the Bill,which is supposed to explain the policy, itis very clear, unless he could point to me
within the explanatory memorandum whereit says that they do not want foreignersto be Chief Executives, and therefore, weare amending that policy. Mr Speaker, let us limit the argumentto what we have on the Order Paper,whether we are for or against theamendment. But I agree completely thatwe need to scrape this amendment andallow only Ghanaians. That is a veryarchaic way of thinking. This is because,if we were talking about any other thing, aChief Executive requires certain amountof knowledge, and the shareholders haveto protect their shares.
