SSNIT Urged to Reassess Investment Strategies Amid Hotel Stake Sale

Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has called on the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to prioritize staging interventions for investment portfolios that are making massive losses if it is truly concerned about its investments.

This comes in the wake of SSNIT's plan to sell a 60% stake in six of its hotels: Labadi Beach Hotel, La Palm Royal Beach Resort, Elmina Beach Resort, Ridge Royal Hotel, Busua Beach Resort, and the Trust Lodge Hotel.

According to SSNIT, this is a strategy to partner with an investor to raise capital to invest in the hotels, and also assist in their management. However, speaking on PM Express on JoyNews, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa highlighted the State Transport Corporation (STC) as the biggest liability over the last seven years.

“If you look at the SIGA report, for example, STC is the biggest liability consistently over the last seven years. STC has been making losses since 2017. On average, a loss of GH₵32 million. Only last year they made a loss of GH₵54 million and yet nobody in the cabinet is interested in STC because it's not profitable, because there is no milking cow.”

Mr. Ablakwa said that unlike these other liabilities, the profits of Labadi Beach Hotel alone can help save all the others. “If SSNIT really is concerned about its investments in various investment portfolios, this is not the area you should be looking at. So this arrangement cannot be in the national interest,” he argued.

Additionally, the North Tongu MP believes that these hotels cannot be sold to Rock City Hotel owned by the Minister of Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong. According to him, the company has been making losses in the past few years and is not in the standing to manage hotels like Labadi Beach Hotel.

“When they were making losses, Labadi Beach Hotel was consistently making profits increasingly, exponentially. Last year Labadi Beach Hotel made a profit of GH₵158 million. They paid dividends to the government of GH₵25 million. They paid taxes to the government of GH₵20.5 million. Rock City had nothing to pay to the government, nothing to pay to the GRE because they said they had made losses.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, June 18, hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the Labadi Beach Hotel for the "Hands Off Our Hotels" demonstration. The group marched to the Jubilee House protesting SSNIT’s decision. The main objective of the protest was to exert pressure on the government to immediately halt the proposed sale of a 60 per cent stake in the prominent hotels.

Mr. Ablakwa, who led the protest, argued that the sale of state-owned properties to government officials constitutes a clear abuse of power that should not be tolerated. The group submitted a petition to the president urging him to call off the deal completely.

Way Forward

To prevent Ministers of State and government officials from purchasing state assets in the future, Mr. Ablakwa assured the public that he is working round the clock to introduce a private members bill to prevent legislators and government officials from buying state assets. According to him, these public officials are elected to manage state assets; therefore, they should not be the very individuals benefiting from such sales.

The legislator added that although the current law prevents these officials from engaging in conflicts of interest, many legislators still find loopholes.

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