Accra (Greater Accra) 12 March 2003-The Value Added Tax (VAT) Service has been given a revenue target of ¢3.6 trillion this year. This represents a 50 per cent increase over its target for last year which was pegged at ¢2.4 trillion.
The Head of the Public Affairs Information of the VAT Service, Victor Obeng Ampah, who disclosed this in an interview in Accra on Monday, said that the service would do all within its power to achieve or even exceed the target. He noted that the service had, therefore, evolved new strategies that will enable it to meet the target. He said the new strategies included the introduction of staff performance appraisal and target setting system, which would ensure that staff members are monitored and evaluated to ensure that they achieve their targets.
Additionally, Ampah said, an improved mechanism of revenue reporting and reconciliation would be introduced and it would include strengthening revenue mobilisation and debt management for companies that owe the service. He noted that the service intends to step up its visits to VAT registered businesses to scrutinise their records to ascertain whether or not what they have in their books tally with what they declare to the service.
He disclosed that the service would carry out 4,500 of such visits to business premises throughout the country in the course of the year. He said the service will also institute a non-filers week to address the challenges posed by businesses that have been filing but not paying the tax, and those that have not registered, as well as those that are registered but have given wrong addresses.
Mr Ampah pointed out that during the non-filers week, all such defaulters would be allowed to rectify the anomalies in their operations with regard to their VAT obligations, adding that “after that, we are going to deal with them according to the law”. He said the law provided that such people should be fined ¢10 million or be made to serve a prison sentence not exceeding five years or both.
He indicated that the service’s public education programmes will embrace identifiable groups, especially the judiciary, which he noted has been giving ridiculously low sentences to business proprietors who flout the law. He said students would be made allies in the VAT education campaigns because they benefit from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) which was largely funded from 2.5 per cent of the VAT rate.
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Takoradi (Western
Region) 12 March 2003- The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) with
assistance from Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) has drawn up
master plans for Takoradi and Tema ports to facilitate their efficiency.
N. P. Galley,
Director of Takoradi Port disclosed this at the inauguration of Combined Bulk
Service (CBS) Limited, a burging and stevedoring company at the Takoradi port
on Monday.
Galley said projects
under the master plan include the provision of berths for manganese, bauxite,
clinker and oil. There will also be three multi-purpose berths and two
container berths with 30,000 meter storage capacity, container handling cranes
and other equipment, as well as bulk loading and unloading facilities.
Galley said the
projects including the provision of equipment would cost about 250 million dollars.
He said while the authority is sourcing for funding for the projects, it had
also embarked upon a number of other projects to improve the ports.
These include the
rehabilitation of two buoys and four berths. He said a limited dredging had
been carried out from the authority's own resources at 54 million dollars.
Galley said the deepening draft at the berth has attracted bigger vessels to
the Takoradi port, adding that GPHA is committed to improving facilities and
conditions at the port and appealed to all stakeholders to join in the
marketing pursuits.
The Deputy Western
Regional Minister, Madam Sophia Horner-Sam, said the Western regional
Co-ordinating Council had embarked on a series of investment to create an
enabling and safe investment environment for business and improve the economy
of the region.
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Accra (Greater Accra)
12 March 2003- The Management of Ghana Breweries Limited (GBL), the leading
beer market shareholders, is upbeat that the company would make significant
improvement in its performance this year, citing control over interest and
reduced risk of exchange losses as main reasons for its optimism.
Management said there
was a renewed confidence that the company would bounce back on the path of
growth this year, after a successful implementation of the first phase of a
strategic plan to revamp business processes for increased productivity and
enhanced efficiency.
Clement Nouwens,
GBL's Financial Director, told journalists on Tuesday that the decision by the
Executive Board of Heineken NV Company, the company's majority shareholder, to
re-capitalise GBL's operations had removed the exchange risks inherent in the
Euro-denominated debts and also reduced the interest burden caused by high
local borrowings.
Heineken in December
last year made an injection of five million Euros as deposit against the
purchase of shares. It is further committed to converting 7.5 million
inter-company debts, including 10.6 billion zero coupon convertible bonds, into
equity.
Nouwens, who was
commenting on the company's preliminary results for 2002, presented to the
Ghana Stock Exchange, said three million Euros out of the five million Euros
cash injection, had already been applied to reduce the overdraft and medium-term
loan position of the company.
"The balance
will be used to finance part of the capital expenditures needed to upgrade the
production facilities," he explained. Operating profit for GBL last year
rose from a loss of 3.3 billion cedis in 2001 to a profit of 6.4 billion cedis
in 2002, representing a 4.7 per cent increase in turnover.
In spite of the
significant improvements in the company's profit, the net result was negative
as a result of massive exchange loss of 7.2 billion cedis in respect of
Euro-denominated debts and the interest burden of 9.4 billion cedis.
"The 35 per cent
depreciation of the cedi against the Euro during the year accounts for the
exchange loss," Nouwens explained. He said management would embark on a
tight budgetary control to reduce cost, close leakage in the supply chain as
well as introduce a staff bonus scheme as part of the company's strategy to
reposition itself in the fierce competition in the beer market.
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Accra (Greater Accra)
12 March 2003- The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said on Monday that
there is the need for government to maintain appropriate balance between
personal emoluments and investment to ensure sustainable growth of the economy.
Professor Bartholomew
Armah, Senior Economist at the Institute said spending so much on salaries and
wages with little investment would only leave fewer resources for poverty
reduction.
He was speaking at a
policy forum organised by the IEA to discuss the links between the Ghana
Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) and the 2003 Budget. Professor Armah said
although the 2003 budget was different because it made sectoral allocation by
shifting money to some key sector of the economy in line with the poverty
reduction strategy, salaries and wages still remain a big proportion of
government expenditure.
He said the inability
of the private sector to expand rapidly to absorb labour meant that the problem
of government bearing huge wage bills would continue for some time. Touching on
a single digit inflation target of nine percent, Prof Armah said it would be
difficult to attain it taking into account high interest rate and the
debilitating effects a war in Iraq would have on the economy.
Besides, a tight
monetary policy without fiscal restraint on the part of government would
increase the cost of borrowing and stifle the private sector's access to funds.
According to him a measure of success is possible if drastic measures were
taken to boost productivity in the agricultural sector to reduce the impact of
food prices on inflation.
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A. A. Blay and
Dominic Adoboli, GNA, Lome,
Lome (Togo) 12 March
2003- Gbevope Adzigbey, the ECOWAS acting Principal Officer for Transportation
and Traffic Planning, has expressed concern at the poor state of transportation
and running of business in West Africa, saying "this is a major reason for
the growing poverty in the Sub-region".
Highlighting the
transport system in the Sub region, Adzigbey said the only way to eliminate
poverty was to place transportation and the running of business in a
competitive position as pertained in other parts of the world.
He said studies had
shown that West African lost about 30 million dollars daily due to time lost in
delayed travelling and corruption among other things in the poor transport
system in the region.
Adzigbey said while
transportation and the cost of doing business was improving and getting cheaper
in advanced countries, the situation continued to worsen in West Africa, making
it difficult and expensive for sub-regional traders to run fast and cheaper
services.
He identified the
causes as cumbersome customs procedures, the problem of the mind set of the
West African to cheat, the wide communication gap among the people, bad roads
and the complex environment without clear cut procedures for doing business.
Adzigbey said about
90 per cent of people in the Sub-region were poor and the only way to reverse
the poverty rates was to enhance business. He said studies had shown that it
was cheaper and faster to transport a container of goods from Europe to Ghana
than from Nigeria to Ghana.
Adzigbey said ECOWAS
was working on plans to reduce cost and corruption in doing business along the
frontiers by creating joint frontiers where customs personnel of all states
would conduct joint searches on vehicles and goods to avoid cumbersome checks
at every border point.
Scanning equipment
would also be provided at the joint frontiers for faster examination of goods,
in addition to a vigorous awareness creation by ECOWAS to sensitise the people
on the efforts of the body to streamline activities in the transport sector,
Adzigbey said.
He said the World
Bank had pledged to improve on the transportation system with emphasis on road
and rail transport. Adzigbey expressed the hope that NEPAD's plan to improve on
business and transportation in West Africa and Africa in general would
complement the efforts of ECOWAS in the sector.
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A.A. Blay and Dominic
Adoboli, GNA Lome,
Lome (Togo) 12 March
2003- The West African Gas Pipeline Project will accelerate regional economic
growth and development through the provision of clean and reliable energy.
It will also help
break artificial barriers, promote regional integration and stimulate private
investment within the West African sub-region. Kofi Asante Okae, External
Affairs Manager of the West African Pipeline (WAGP), stated these when he gave
an overview and potentials of the project at the third ECOWAS Trade Fair in
Lome, Togo.
He said the project
would stimulate job creation and help reduce the cost of power generation
within the ECOWAS States. Okae, using the Takoradi Thermal Plant as an example,
said the current oil price of between 30 and 35 dollars, with an average cost
of 24 dollars per barrel over the past 20 years for the generation of power,
would reduce to between 16 and 18 dollars per barrel using gas from WAGP in the
initial stages, adding that the bill for using WAGP gas would decrease as
demand increased.
Okae said the premier
objective of the project was to transport natural gas from the Niger Delta of
Nigeria into viable markets in Benin, Togo and Ghana. He said WAGP was
committed to the observance of world-class environmental impact assessment in
the countries through which the pipeline would pass and adhere to high health,
safety and other standards using World-Class international and local
consultants in the implementation of the project.
The WAGP was also
committed to the establishment of long-term and mutual beneficial partnership
with host communities and would use proactive stakeholder and community
consultation to enhance project benefits for the communities, he said.
This would enable
local knowledge and conditions to influence project designs, construction and
operation and ensure that community development projects were designed based on
socio-economic baseline study and needs assessments.
Okae said a Company
to be known as WAPCO, would be formed to own, build and operate the WAGP, which
is a public-private partnership with Chevron holding 36 per cent shares,
Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), 25 per cent, Shell, 18 per cent,
Volta River Authority (VRA) of Ghana, 16.3 per cent Sobe Gas of Benin and Soto
Gas of Togo 2 per cent shares each.
The project covering
a length of 620 kilometres, with 560 kilometres offshore is estimated to cost
between 450 - 500 million dollars. Eighty-five per cent of the gas volume would
be used for power generation, with 15 per cent for industrial application.
Under the auspices of
ECOWAS, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria signed the agreement in 1995 and
commissioned an independent feasibility studies in 1999, which concluded that
WAGP was technically feasible and economically viable.
In January, this year
Presidents John Agyekum Kufuor, Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, Mathew Kerekou of
Benin and Olusegu Obasanjo of Nigeria signed the international treaty on WAGP
at the ECOWAS Summit in Dakar, Senegal.
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