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| Commentary
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We
invite commentaries from writers all over. The subject is about
Ghana and the world. We reserve the right to accept or reject submissions,
but we are not necessarily responsible for the opinions expressed
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Paul Colier, Guardian, UK
October 7, 2008
The
loot-seeking elites that control parts of Africa
illicitly send capital out of the region to the tune of
$20 to $28bn per year. Illicit money flows are hard to
quantify, but this is the new estimate by Raymond Baker
of the NGO Global Financial Integrity, the most careful
and ingenious study to date. Capital flight of this
magnitude is roughly equivalent to the entire aid inflow
to the region, so closing it would generate a similar
resource transfer to doubling aid. One side-effect of
the financial crisis is that aid commitments will be at
the front of the queue for spending cuts. For example,
in the vice-presidential debate it was the only
Democratic spending pledge that Joe Biden suggested
might be rethought.
While the crisis will weaken our assistance for the
poorest countries by curtailing aid, it could
inadvertently have an offsetting effect if we use it to
close the illicit outflow. Money flows out of Africa
into our banks, and into the offshore banks that depend
for their existence upon being able to transact with our
banks. US rules on banking transparency are even weaker
than the European rules: vast sums looted from the
public purse in Africa are being held in nominee
accounts and moved around the world at greater speed
than our cumbersome legal processes can track them down.
...More
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