Accra (Greater Accra) 11 April 2002- Ghana's development partners, have agreed to assist the government with one billion dollars to close the overall financing gap for the 2002 fiscal year.
The amount, however, include 250 million dollars the country would receive as debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country initiative. This was the outcome of the three-day consultative meeting with government officials, on Wednesday.
The World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Mr Peter Harold told a news conference that the partners readily expressed their willingness to help the government because although it inherited a very bad macroeconomic situation it had succeeded in stabilising the economy and reducing inflation.
"There is a broad agreement that the big challenge ahead is to find the way forward to stronger, more sustained, and more broad-based economic growth, including using the space created by Ghana's accessing HIPC debt relief to focus on pro-poor expenditures," he said.
"The partners share a belief in a vision for Ghana that is generating more wealth, but ensuring that the benefits of growth are distributed much more equitably," he stressed. However, Mr Harold said that a critical issue was to ensure that the development partners redeemed their pledges on time to ensure the smooth running of government programmes.
He expressed the hope that the partners would fulfil their obligations since the pledges were not contingent on government taking any broad measures or achieving certain targets before the funds were released but purely on the good economic performance that had been achieved so far.
Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance noted that the donor community could not fulfil the development aspirations of the country and said aid was not a sufficient ground for development. To achieve sustainable development, there was the need to strengthen and to create an enabling environment to attract the private sector, he said.
Mr Osafo-Maafo assured the partners of the government's commitment to the divestiture process and explained that delays were to ensure that the right thing was done to the benefit of the country and consistent with the government's fight against corruption.
The Meeting, which was on the theme, "An Agenda for Growth and Prosperity" discussed the Economic Situation and Prospects, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy, Decentralisation and Governance.
It also dwelt on President Kufuor's five priority development areas of infrastructure, modernised agriculture, enhanced social services, private sector and rural development and good governance. Consultative Group meetings are organised by the World Bank for developing countries to meet their development partners to discuss key policy issues.
It also affords the partners the opportunity to indicate their expected financial support. About 1.5 billion dollars in external assistance to Ghana was committed during the last meeting in Accra in 1999.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 11 April 2002- Mr Masamitsu Hiroumi, Senior Vice President of the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA), on Wednesday said Ghana was one of the most important strategic partners for Japanese assistance to Africa.
He said this was based on the recognition that Ghana had made steady progress in democratisation and economic reforms thereby playing an important role in the West Africa sub-region. Mr Hiroumi was briefing newsmen after he had paid a courtesy call on President John Agyekum Kufuor at the Castle, Osu.
He said Japan's major assistance to Ghana was in agriculture, education, health, provision of potable water, infrastructure such as roads and rural electrification, economic reforms and private sector development.
Mr Hiroumi pledged Japan's support in the form of grants and technical co-operation under JICA activities in Ghana. JICA's co-operation and activities with Ghana began in 1977 and so far 750 volunteers have been sent to Ghana. There are 45 of them currently working in the country.
Their activities are centred on four main areas: Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (STME) project to improve on the teaching capacity of teachers in the upper primary and junior secondary school levels.
The improvement of health in-service training for health workers, research into infectious disease at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) at the University of Ghana, Legon and introduction of irrigated agricultural systems.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 11 April 2002- Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, Executive Chairman of Databank Financial Services Limited, on Wednesday urged local investors to take advantage of the vacuum created by the reduction of foreign direct and portfolio investment to pool funds for long term returns.
He noted that with the fundamental shifts in global investment as a result of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States, Africa skidded further as world growth output dropped from 4.6 to 2.4 per cent in 2001.
Mr Ofori-Atta was speaking when he presented a report at the annual general meeting of EPACK Investment Fund Limited, an equity pooled fund, in Accra. He said: "Cost to African countries of services such as insurance has consequently gone up or has been curtailed thus reducing the flow of both foreign direct and portfolio investment.
"A number of portfolio investors are actually disinvesting. This, however, creates opportunity for local capital and saving; pooled funds such as EPACK can capitalise on this vacuum for good long-term returns."
Mr Ofori-Atta noted that the Ghanaian economy was recovering and attributed it to the smooth political transition that contributed to an enabling political environment that impacted positively on the economy. He said improvements in the macro-economic environment resulted in the Ghana stock market recording a moderate performance pick up in 2001 with dollar returns recording positive gains.
He said although the Databank Stock Index (DSI) posted a gain of 11 per cent in 2001 as against 15 per cent in 2000, in dollar terms the index for 2001 was up six per cent, while the index in 2000 lost 34 per cent.
Mr Ofori-Atta said the rally in the index during the year was driven mainly by the manufacturing and consumer goods sectors. "With the decline in interest rates, investors have gained more confidence and are now moving to the stock market to enhance returns."
He observed that with the downward trend of interest rates on treasury bills, it was expected that there would be a more direct correlation between risk and return and shares would outperform treasury bills in 2002.
Mr Ofori-Atta announced that the board of the fund had made an application to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate EPACK as a mutual fund and expressed the hope the permission would be granted to ensure a more open and dynamic marketing of the fund for shareholders to enjoy the advantages of operating a larger fund.
Net inflows into EPACK fund amounted to 909 million cedis, a significant increase on the 315 million cedis in 2000. The directors did not recommend the payment of any dividend. Established in 1996 with five shareholders with 2,500 shares at 100 cedis each, EPACK has grown to have 1,300 shareholders with 4.2 million shares, at a price of 700 cedis a share as at December 2001.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 11 April 2002- The GSE All-Share Index barely moved in quiet trading on Wednesday as it inched up by only 0.08 points, thanks to a one-cedi gain by Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB).
The Index, which is the main market gauge, ended at 1,020.61 points from 1,020.53 points on Monday. Total number of shares traded slumped to only 24,000 from 10,765,400 shares that changed hands on Monday.
On the broader market, there was only one price change - a one cedi gain by GCB at 1,701 cedis. The change for the year remained at 6.76 per cent while market capitalisation went up to 4,009.72 billion cedis from 4,009.55 billion cedis.
The following are the closing prices of the equities in cedis:
ABL 327
AGC 18,800
ALW 4,300
BAT 637
CFAO 60
EIC 3,126
FML 1,000
GBL 1,000
GCB 1,701 +1
GGL 910
HFC 950
MGL 250
MLC 147
MOGL 18,805
PAF 750
PBC 450
PZ 1,200
SCB 20,500
SPPC 361
SSB 2,705
UNIL 2,901
CMLT 430
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Accra (Greater Accra) 11 April 2002-
Bankers.
Currency Buying Selling
US Dollar 7,563.45 7,752.36
Pound Sterling 10,880.78 11,154.10
Swiss Franc 4,549.01 4,659.58
Canadian Dollar 4,746.04 4,861.23
Japanese Yen 58.06 59.48
S/African Rand 675.41 690.13
Euro 6,674.92 6,835.46
CFA Franc 10.18 10.42
Naira 64.84 66.46
Ecowas/WAUA 9,355.16 -----------
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