Tor Incurs ˘2 Trillion Debt
“Abolish VAT”
Kufuor says 'Thanks' but….
Ex-Ministers Foreign Bank Account
JAK gets first tongue lashing
Hot start for NPP government
SFO interim report not correct
Row over Ato Dadzie and SFO's Billions
Tips for NPP
BNI boss out IGP sacked
The Daily Graphic
Tor Incurs ˘2 Trillion Debt
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has so far incurred a debt of ˘2 trillion as a result of failure to recover cost of importing and refining of crude oil for the country, The Daily Graphic reports.
Besides this, the refinery has also compounded its over-exposure by securing a loan of $185 million for a capital-intensive project (a plant for processing residue from crude oil) whose commitment fee and up-front charges are about $85 million.
The company has already started paying for the loan on the project, which is yet to become operational.
Speaking to the paper in an interview in Accra yesterday, Dr. Yves Charles Wereko Brobby, an energy expert and adviser to the transitional team of the new government, said: "A chunk of the debt was amassed from March to December last year".
"The refinery is in total financial mess and its financial viability has been totally eroded," he added.
Graphic investigations further showed that TOR's liability increased from ˘633.2 billion in 1999 to ˘2,102.2 trillion in 2000 whilst its operating loss for the same period was from ˘89.2 billion to ˘1,053 trillion, respectively.
Dr. Wereko-Brobby said underlying the financial inefficiency and maladministration is the unorthodox mode of project financing and the political game the previous government played with the pricing of petroleum products.
He also described as "unrealistic" the decision of the previous government to absorb the ˘250 billion cost of the expansion of the capacity of TOR to process crude oil from 28,000 barrels to 45,000 barels a day, since this was done at the expense of the tax payer. More../
'Don't increase prices of petroleum products'
In another front-page story, the Graphic says a Ghanaian economist, Nii Moi Thompson, has urged the government not to rush to increase the prices of petroleum products as a means of correcting the structural imbalance in the economy.
He said, although current indications on the ground make upward adjustment of the prices of petroleum products justifiable, the government needs to be cautious in order not to derail the marginal gains in macro-economic stability.
Speaking in Accra yesterday, Nii Thompson, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Africa-nomics, a Ghanaian economic and management consultancy group, said, "I believe that the government will have to wait for about six months before hiking the price of petroleum products."
This, he explained, would avoid any rippling effect, which would destabilize the economy.
'We Won't spare ex-ministers, officials if…'
The Chief of Staff of the Office of the President, Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, is reported by the Daily Graphic as stating that officials of the past government found to have taken away public property would be dealt with according to law.
He said even though 144 vehicles have so far been paid for by officials of the past government, his office is yet to go into how the cars were valued and paid for.
"We have asked the government valuer to tell us how the cars were valued and paid for."
Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey was specking on "Kokorokoo", a morning show programme of Peace FM, an Accra radio station, yesterday.
He made it clear that under the transitional arrangement, government officials were entitled to only one car and that "under no circumstances should anybody be allowed to buy multiple cars."
He said in the meantime, his office is going through the list to check whether some officials took cars, which are less than two years old.
When we have done that and known the number of cars which were disposed of "we will than ask the valuation officer to explain how he came by the prices put on the cars sold out".
GRi…/
“Abolish VAT”
The Evening News carries a call on President Kufuor's government to roll-back many of the recent tariff increases and scrap the Value Added Tax (VAT).
Professor George Ayittey, a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), who made the call, said high taxes do not only encourage bribery, corruption and evasion but also act as a disincentive to production.
He told a press conference in Accra yesterday of the task ahead of the new government, which he called "the G-R Agenda", and said high interest rates in the country and tax rate, are also an indication that government expenditure is out of control, hence the ever increasing need to raise taxes or borrow from the banking system.
This, he said could be rolled back and the budget balanced at the same time, citing the expenditures on ACDR's and revolutionary committees.
He noted that production has lagged in the country because of high taxes, high interest rates and government hostility towards private business and erratic talk from high government officials and suggested that the new government must focus on increasing production in the country as a way to economic recovery.
The key to economic growth, Prof Ayittey said was investment both domestic and foreign.
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Ministers must return cars
The issue of ex-ministers and public officials leaving office with their Saloon cars and ex-gratia has generated a mixed reaction of suspicion and anger over the past week.
Whereas the NDC has sought to justify the practice as a convention that it initiated on its own while in office, the generality of members of the public have expressed serious reservations about the practice.
Not left out of the furore are some within the NPP top hierarchy who feel the manner in which the whole exercise is being prosecuted raised issues of national concern.
Mr Kowadwo Afari of the NPP whose views according to him, reflects the thinking of most of the party top executives has suggested that those vehicles already in possession of the ex-officials be returned to the appropriate quarters for the proper valuation to be made.
Mr Afari, a member of the NPP Communications committee said given the reaction by the public against the exercise so far, it was necessary for the joint transitional team to accept public opinion on the matter and allow for proper valuation of the vehicles in the interest of the nation.
He said if truly the convention was that ex-Ministers should be allowed to leave office with their saloon cars then there was no reason for them to rush into changing the registration numbers of the cars to beat an imagined deadline.
"The speed with which they rushed into changing the number plates was suggestive that something improper was being done hurriedly in order that the in-coming government might not be able to reverse whatever they did," he stated.
GRi../
Kufuor says 'Thanks' but….
President J.A. Kufuor yesterday appealed to the public to restrict their courtesy calls on him to the most urgent ones for the next three weeks.
That, the President said, would enable him to work to appoint his Ministers and other officials within the next three weeks.
These were contained in a press statement signed by Ms Elizabeth A. Ohene, a Government Spokesperson, in Accra.
It explained that many members of the public had been calling on the President and many more had been seeking audience with him.
Inevitably, these calls take a lot of time, even when people are at their most considerate and ask for only two minutes.
The statement said that arrangements would be made after the three weeks at specific times for the public to call on him.
President Kufuor expressed his sincere thanks to the many thousands of people who had sent him messages of congratulations.
"He and his family have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of phone calls, telegrams, cards, flowers, letters and personal calls," The Ghanaian Times quoted the statement.
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52 mothers abscond from K'bu Hospital
In another story, the Times reports that Fifty-two mothers who were operated upon at the Maternity Department of the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital in Accra during delivery last year, absconded because they could not pay their medical bills.
Nana Gladys Kusi-Yeboah, Principal Nursing Officer in charge of Maternity, who disclosed these to the Times expressed concern about the situation saying: "anything at all could happen to them and their babies since they would not have the proper medication and treatment for their respective ailments".
According to her, some of the patients concealed their babies in bags to outwit the nurses, while others had theirs taken away by relatives who wrapped and hid the babies under the clothes.
"This practice could easily lead to suffocation and injuries due to improper handling"
Giving statistics on deliveries, Madam Kusi-Yeboah said that the department recorded a total of 12,519 successful deliveries last year as against 10,851 in 1999.
Out of the number, 7,548 babies were delivered through Spontaneous Vaginal delivery while 247 were through vacuum extraction.
GRi../
Ex-Ministers Foreign Bank Account
Many Ghanaians in the U.S.A and other Western Countries are determined that the monies stolen and hidden in foreign accounts that are helping to fuel the economies of their host countries should be fast tracked home, reports the Ghanaian Voice.
According to news just filtered in from the U.S, Ghanaians there have set up a permanent website on the internet to collate details of those accounts which they will furnish to the Kufuor government.
"So far the response has been fantastic and soon the President will have details of the off-shore accounts sometimes running into tens of millions of dollars, Swiss Francs, Guilders and Deutsche marks. Things will be made hot for them" said a Ghanaian who is staying in Cranston Rhude Island and involved in the enterprise of the setting up of the website.
Back home in Ghana, some editors of the private media who stumbled upon the private accounts of some Ministers, top party men, bootlickers and friends of the last regime are preparing to hand them over to the new administration.
GRi../
JAK gets first tongue lashing
The President John Agyekum Kufuor has been lambasted by critics for traveling to Lome, Togo to celebrate the anniversary of a coup d'etat with President Eyadema, carries the Guide.
Last Saturday, January 13, Kufuor went to Lome on the invitation of Gnassiubge Eyadema, who had on January 7 also attended the inauguration ceremony of President Kufuor in Accra.
According to the Press Secretary, Elizabeth Ohene, Kufuor made the trip to promote good neighbourliness and to thank Eyadema for his gesture of honouring Ghanaians by attending the January 7 event.
She said the honour conferred on Kufuor was coincidental because the president would have had to make the trip at one time or the other to thank Eyadema, and therefore seized the opportunity to do so.
Kufuor was accompanied by his Minister designate for Foreign Affairs and a contingent of the Ghana Armed Forces Central Band, who participated in the parade.
Critics however expressed their worry over President Kufuor joining a notorious coup maker to celebrate a bloody uprising when back home in Ghana, the NPP has always been against such celebrations, notably June 4th and 31st December.
The issue has therefore generated such controversy with various views being expressed by several Ghanaians.
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Kufuor speaks on NDC cars
The President, Mr John Agyekum Kufuor has assured Ghanaians that his government will not engage in any acts of 'you scratch my back and I scratch your back' with the outgoing government officials nor their agents.
President Kufuor said he has ordered that the list of vehicles that have so far been re-registered be made available to him, 'and I want to assure you that they will be published as soon as we get them'.
He gave this assurance to a cross section of editors and senior journalists at Ada over the weekend. The occasion was a media bash organized by Dr. Sam Jonah, Chief Executive of AGC.
President Kufuor explained that during the meetings of the Transitional Team, his side of the team was made to believe that by conventions, certain category of public officers are allowed to purchase the vehicles that they have been using provided such vehicles are more than two years old.
He however said his team was not part of the valuation of those vehicles and how the valuers arrived at the going prices that have generated the legitimate public concern.
GRi../
Hot start for NPP government
It is early yet but President John Agyekum Kufuor's promise of ushering in a positive change in Ghana political life is already under intense strain, says the Public Agenda.
The number of controversial issues just keeps popping up by the day.
Among them are how the new NPP government should deal with some of the sordid details of the PNDC/NDC era, what out-going ministers and MPs should take home at the end of their terms and what the current MPs and future DCES should be given.
These issues are clogging the airwaves and dominating discussions in homes and offices.
Allegation of improper sale of cars to ex-ministers and other appointees of the NDC government and hefty bonuses for MPs of the last Parliament put both the new administration and the former government on the defensive for the best part of last week.
The NPP has been accused of striking a "bad deal" with the old regime as well as continuing and possibly worsening old habits like granting freebies specifically, the proposal to build five-bedroom houses for current MPs and future DCEs.
Such accusations have with some suddenness pushed the NPP into the role of the defendant instead of prosecutor in the court of public opinion.
The Chief of Staff, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey has been working in over-drive to try and dissociate the new administration from the loud grumbling against his government.
The NDC has also been on the defensive. It has argued that there was nothing wrong with the ex-ministers buying the cars they used while in office at less than 15 per cent of the their worth. It is a convention even in the public service, NDC argues.
"The sale of the vehicles is in line with an existing policy whereby senior public officers on leaving office are given the option to purchase one saloon car which they were using," the paper reports Alhaji Huudu Yahaya General Secretary of the NDC as having said at a press confab last Friday.
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SFO interim report not correct
Daasebre Dr Oti Boateng, former Government Statistician and Omanhene of New Juaben had described as false the allegations made against him in the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) interim report, the Crusading Guide reports.
In a press statement signed by himself, Oti Boateng said the SFO did not give him the opportunity to state his case on the allegations of fraud made against him.
"Furthermore", said he, "I was not shown the findings to enable me comment on them before publication by the SFO".
The former Government Statistician said because the SFO did not hear his side on the allegations, it "resorted to miscalculations, understatements of actual payments and overstatement of actual amount released to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) for the project to arrive at an unsubstantiated and non-existent shortfall of over ˘310 million to be recovered from me".
Citing an example of an overstatement of money paid by the World Bank to the GSS for the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire Project, Oti Boateng said the SFO though acknowledged in its report that $399,360 was slated for the job, failed to state that the money which was paid in two installments of $99,424 and $260,000 – totaling $359,425- was short by $39,936.
"Yet the SFO in its Interim Report assumed that the GSS operated with the full budget provision of $39,936", he said.
"This forms part of what according to the Interim Report, I should refund", Oti Boateng added.
He said actual payments made to the field staff were grossly understated. Instead of ˘518,086,000 being money paid to them, SFO stated that ˘317,320,000 was the money paid to the personnel.
"The difference of about ˘200 million is part of the amount which according to the miscalculations of the SFO, I should refund", the paper quoted him as stating.
GRi../
Row over Ato Dadzie and SFO's Billions
Officials at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) have given conflicting reasons for the withdrawal of ˘4.7 billion from the accounts of the defunct National Investigations Committee sub-committee on Timber at the Bank of Ghana for the former chief of staff, Nana Ato Dadzie.
But Chronicle's investigations have established that ˘3 billion out of the money was disbursed by Nana Ato Dadzie for purposes which Chronicle could not immediately ascertain.
Pursued to his Community 10 Tema residence, Mr. Dadzie could not be reached to defend allegations that most of the funds went into political campaign financing as his guard told this reporter that he had gone out.
The Acting Executive Director of the SFO, Mr Brian A. Sapati, told the Chronicle in a follow-up interview that ˘1.7 billion the SFO withdrew from the Bank of Ghana was given to the institution to recapitalise for logistics and other staff benefits.
He confirmed Chronicle's inquiry that the SFO withdrew the money following the personal intervention of ex-president Rawlings after a report that the money at the Bank of Ghana was missing.
According to Sapati, accounts of the National Investigations Committee on Timber had been idle since the disbandment of the NIC in 1991.
This was not disclosed to the Serious Fraud Office.
He revealed that a BNI operative, Mr. Gustav Addae drew their attention to the existence of the account and following that the SFO petitioned the office of the then Chief of Staff Mr. Dadzie, who authorized the release of the money to the SFO but not without a fight with the Bank of Ghana, reports the Chronicle.
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Tips for NPP
An Associate Professor of Economics at the American University, Washington DC, Prof. George B.N. Ayittey has enumerated a number of measures that the new government needs to take to bring the economy out of the woods, according to a report carried by the Statesman.
He said to "strengthen the cedi and pull ourselves out of our economic miasma, we must focus on production; trimming government expenditure, and eliminating the unnecessary demands for foreign exchange such as paying for the education of the wards of senior government officials abroad, when we have universities and hospitals in Ghana."
Prof. Ayittey who made the suggestions at a press conference in Accra on the task ahead for the new government, noted that Ghana's economy is in a coma and needs urgent rescue.
He said as a deliberate policy to stifle local investors who did not identify with it, the past government created a hostile environment for them, leading to the collapse of several industries.
"The key to economic growth, now is investment, both domestic and foreign. But foreign investors have not found Ghana, or Africa for that matter, an attractive place to invest because an enabling environment does not exist," he stressed.
GRi../
BNI boss out IGP sacked
The Independent says it can reveal authoritatively that the Inspector-General of Police Peter Nanfuri and the Director of the Bureau of National Investigations - Yaw Donkor are out of their jobs.
What is stalling the announcement from the President's office, especially in the case of the IGP, our sources say, is the problem of choosing from four equally qualified short-listed candidates for the job.
As at press time yesterday, the National Security Advisor was conferring with the President on who succeeds the BNI BOSS Yaw Donkor.
Like the case of the IGP, Yaw Donkor's dismissal is only being delayed because the government is still weighing the options with regard to who among the short-listed candidates would be more suitable for the job.
When contacted Hon. Malik Alhassan, the Minister designate for the interior confirmed that the BNI boss, Yaw Donkor has indeed been replaced.
He could however not give the name of Yaw Donkor's successor because discussions were still ongoing in that direction. Government according to sources has only twenty four hours to announce the new BNI boss.
In the case of Nanfuri the source said he has only three more days hang on as the inspector General of Police.
Informed sources in government circles hinted The Independent that President Kufuor's dilemma is premised on his assembly of equally competent personnel that has been short-listed for the position of the inspector General Police.
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Kufuor assures Press
President John Agyekum Kufuor showed the positive all inclusiveness of his 16-day regime when he met a cross-section of editors and other senior journalists of both the private and state-owned media at a media bash at Ada in the Greater Accra region last Saturday.
The all-inclusive meeting, the first of its kind in some 20 years (former President Rawlings preferred to do business with only the state-owned media) was hosted by Sam Jonah, Chief Executive of Ashanti Goldfields Company, who over the years has supported media development in Ghana.
Addressing the media gathering, President Kufuor who made a special stopover on his return journey from Lome-Togo, thanked the entire media of Ghana for their contribution to the new air of freedom in Ghana and said that he will do everything to defend and promote the change.
According to President Kufuor nobody including himself could claim exclusive credit for the change and paid tribute to the opposition parties, the press and the ordinary Ghanaian for the wind of change blowing through the country.
"God chose me as the point-man for the change but I want to share the glory with all of you", The Independent reported.
GRi../