GRi Business, Economics & Finance 28 - 05 - 2002
Bank
Of Ghana intensifies supervision on rural banks
Unilever in biggest UK media contract
Link NEPAD to existing initiatives - J. H. Mensah
Cheating Cocoa Purchasing Clerk made to pay
difference
Bank Of Ghana intensifies supervision on rural banks
Obuasi
(Ashanti Region) 28 May 2002 - The Bank of Ghana has stepped up its supervisory
duties on financial institutions with special attention on rural banks. Mr
Evans Aidoo, the Supervising Manager of Adansi Rural Bank, announced this at a
public forum organised by the bank for its customers at Obuasi.
The forum
was to enable the bank to interact with the customers and assist the management
of the bank and also assess their performance. Mr Aidoo said with measures put
in place by BOG including ensuring that every rural bank exercised effective
internal controls the collapse of rural banks would be reduced.
The bank has
a crop of Board of Directors whose vision and banking knowledge would continue
to guarantee the growth and progress of the bank, he said. He said the bank
had, within two years, increased its vital indicators such as deposits, capital
adequacy and profits by over 400 per cent. On interest rates, Mr Aidoo said the
bank had been responding to changes in the national economy and that as the
national interest rates go down, the bank also adjusted accordingly.
Mr Joseph
Osei, a Director of the bank, asked the customers to buy shares to enable them
to become owners of the bank and also help to raise the bank's share capital.
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Unilever in biggest UK media contract
London (UK)
28 May 2002 - Unilever has sealed a groundbreaking, four-year television
advertising agreement with Carlton and Granada, the ITV broadcasters. The deal,
worth £320 million, represents the biggest commercial tie-up of airtime in the
history of UK television and signals a new upheaval in the relationship between
advertisers and media companies.
The promise
of a four-year income stream will provide some revenue comfort to the
financially challenged ITV companies, which are both expected to reveal losses
this week. The significance, however, lies in the level of discounts likely to
be secured by one of the world's biggest advertisers. Unilever, with an annual
global spend, close to $4 billion (£2.7 billion), is also the UK's top
advertiser, spending more than £120 million per annum on leading brands, such
as Dove, Persil, Flora and PG Tips.
Unilever is
breaking new ground bundling the advertising spend of all of its UK brands in
order to lock in advantageous terms. "Unilever is one of the keenest
buyers in the business," an expert at one media agency said. "It is
very rare to get deals longer than one year but this is in a league of its
own."
In offering
to purchase an unprecedented four years' worth of airtime, Unilever would have
sought extremely keen terms, which could represent discounts as high as 25 per
cent from the usual rates. Unilever will be able to shuffle its deck of brands
and slot promotions into its portfolio of airtime to suit the timing of its
campaigns. Moreover, the consumer products colossus has tied Carlton and
Granada to incentive payments.
Jerry Hill,
the chief executive of Interactive Media, the agency which acted for Unilever
in the transaction, said the agreement was intended to be a powerful motivator:
"The deal is structured such that if ITV delivers more audience, it gets
more money."
In addition,
Unilever will expect to get "favoured customer status", opening the
door to potentially lucrative sponsorship deals between programmes and the
household brands owned by the food and soap multinational. "There are no
undertakings but sponsorship has become an important part of a broadcaster's
revenue," said Mr Hill. "The programme can be an important marketing vehicle
for the advertiser."
Unilever is
setting the pace in a battle with the media companies for more competitive
rates. Acquisitions over the past two years have boosted Unilever's arsenal,
with more top brands, including Ben & Jerry's, Slim-Fast, Hellmann's, Knorr
and Ragu. Using its growing power as a worldleading advertiser Unilever has
achieved big savings in the cost of promoting its products. In the first
quarter of this year, the company reduced its spend by £60 million, as a result
of lower media rates.
ITV declared
yesterday that the deal was a vote of confidence in the network but Unilever is
buying airtime at a time of weakness for broadcasters. Spending on TV
advertising has suffered a sharp fall, in part because of recession and the
collapse of dot-com advertisers, but also due to increasing disenchantment with
the effectiveness of the medium.
Carlton and
Granada will both reveal substantial losses this week from their disastrous ITV
Digital venture. However, the two companies will be at pains to show that they
can arrest the erosion of ITV's share of the UK audience, which has fallen from
40 per cent to 26 per cent over the past decade.
While media
companies fight for more of the public's attention, the big brand advertisers
are consolidating their dollars and using their muscle to set terms. Unilever's
deal with ITV comes after its multimillion dollar alliance with AOL Time Warner
in January.
The AOL deal
envisages cross-platform promotion of Unilever products on the Internet, on
television networks, in print and on cinema screens. An agreement in April with
JC Decaux, the billboard advertising group, will commit Unilever to €100
million (£63 million) over five years, in return for significant savings on
rates.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 28 May 2002 - Senior Minister, Joseph Henry Mensah on Monday lauded the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) as an agenda to free the continent from the shackles of poverty and economic downturn, but said it must be linked with existing continental initiatives.
In an address read on his behalf at a day's seminar on the Africa's economic blueprint for members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr Mensah said NEPAD's programmes needed to be aligned to commitments that sub-regional groupings had already undertaken to enable them to be translated into concrete actions.
Also, internationally agreed development targets in health, education, gender equality, debt reduction, poverty reduction and overseas development assistance must be met. "Despite thorough diagnosis of Africa's problems spanning a couple of decades, the programme design and choice of instruments for the achievement of the goals and objectives appear to have been defective," Mr Mensah said.
He attributed the failure to hostile international environment, external shocks and unfavourable terms of trade, the lack of political will, tardiness and mismanagement. He said NEPAD offered the opportunity to reverse the abnormal economic and social situation through changing the relationship that underpinned it, adding, what the continent needed was a genuine partnership, based on mutual interests and benefit, shared commitment and binding agreement from the developed countries.
"Africans are appealing neither for the further entrenchment of dependency through aid, nor for marginal concessions." The Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang said NEPAD would neither replace existing regional and sub-regional initiatives nor disregard current co-operation activities but rather establish linkages to strengthen them.
Dr Vladmir Antwi Danso a Lecturer at the Legon Centre for International Affairs called for popular participation and the involvement of social partners in all discussions on NEPAD and wondered how the initiative could be described as African's own when only the political leaders were calling the shots. Dr Yaw Graham, Co-ordinator of Third World Network, a non-governmnetal organisation said NEPAD would fail if African leaders relied on aid and debt relief from donors to finance their action plans.
He said efforts to increase domestic savings and investment were important to sustain the programmes envisaged under the partnership. Dr Douglas Zormelo, a resource person, said NEPAD's action plans must be in tandem with national development plans and backed with legislation for it to be meaningful.
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Kyebi (Eastern Region) 28 May 2002 - A cocoa purchasing clerk, who paid 160 farmers less than the government's approved price for cocoa in April has been made to pay them the difference.
Christian Atta, Akyem Odumase Depot Purchasing Clerk of Kuapa Kokoo, paid 2,915,000 cedis, which represented the difference in the old and the new price, to the farmers. In addition, he had to pay the in and out transport fares of the farmers from Akyem Odumase to Kyebi to collect the money.
Atta in April paid the farmers the old purchasing price for cocoa instead of the new price announced by the government. The cheating came to light when the District Chief Executive of East Akyem District, Mr Emmanuel Victor Asihene paid a working visit to Akyem Odumase.
However, during Police investigations the farmers said they agreed to collect the old price because Atta had at that time not received money to pay the new price. Mr Asihene warned that farmers, who condoned and connived with lawbreakers, could also be prosecuted.
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