After gaining their independence, African countries followed various industrialization policies. Kenya and Tanzania, up to the Arusha Declaration din February 1967, pursued industrialization via private enterprises. Uganda and Nigeria followed a mixed pattern, that is, investments by both private and public enterprises; Ghana, since 1961 and up to the coup in February 1966 by the National Liberation Council (NLC) that ousted Nkrumah, relied primarily on public-enterprise investment (see also Grayson 1970, 1971ab, 1972).

A Conglomerate in Africa: Public-Sector Manufacturing Enterprises in Ghana, 1962-1971

Inflation in Ghana (1966–78): A Perspective on the Monetarist v Structuralist Debate

This chapter is closely linked to the previous one because it documents in some detail the systematic tendencies in the technological behaviour of public enterprises that were mentioned there. It is also closely related to the later chapters because of the emphasis that it places on external capital in financing the extraordinarily rapid growth of the public sector. Indeed it is with the nature of, and the interactions between, these two distinguishing features of industrialization in Africa that the subsequent chapters of this book are mainly concerned.

The Growth and Technological Performance of Public Sector Institutions

The hypothesis to be examined is that there were considerable net costs in the choice of suppliers' credits as a method of financing Ghanaian industrialization in the early 1960s The hypothesis will be tested in terms of industrial projects only Omitted thus is the suppliers' credit financing of prestige projects and/or "white elephants"; likewise omitted is the suppliers' credit financing of infrastructure projects, because their long gestation periods and low returns on investment make them suitable only for loans of long maturity at concessional terms Industrial projects are the only ones for which returns can be measured with any degree of certainty The returns from infrastructure projects are usually tied in with "secondary benefits," and to calculate returns on these is problematical Returns from prestige projects are, of course, intangible By concentrating on the financing of industrial projects through suppliers' credits, the intention is to put the hypothesis to a vigorous test In evaluating the suitability of suppliers' credits on Ghanaian industrialization, the proposition is advanced that in Ghana it takes about 5-6 years to bring a publicly owned plant into profitable operation (in terms of both domestic currency and foreign exchange)-assuming that the plant is feasible to begin with The effect of this longer than average

Leslie E. Grayson

Papers

The Role of Suppliers' Credits in the Industrialization of Ghana