1 million minimum balance is unacceptable
UK releases fund for poverty alleviation by 2015
Inability to fully utilise trade opportunities
GOG and CIDA hold bilateral consultations
We have seen no need for change
Civil Servants urged to increase productivity
Cocoa production is sustainable
Ghana is a medium human development country
1 million minimum balance
is unacceptable
Delivering the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) 50th
Anniversary lectures in
He said the practice whereby account holders were charged
for withdrawing monies less than 500,000 cedis per
transaction should also be stopped since 40 per cent of
Prof Asenso-Okyere noted that the
refusal of banks to pay interest on foreign currency accounts was not right as
it reduced the capacity of the banks to mobilise more money. "Some banks
do not pay interest on foreign currency accounts, but a cursory study of these
accounts has shown that foreign currency deposits can expand substantially if
depositors are paid interest on their balances."
He asked GCB to enact policies that will help in savings
mobilization in the country to spearhead investments for development. He asked
the banking sector to provide long-term financing and venture capital needed
for the establishment of business enterprises and working capital for the
production and distribution of goods and services needed as import substitutes
and for export.
"It is only when the productive sectors of the economy
pick up that
He outlined the historical growth of the bank from
pre-independence, adding that GCB has come a long way from the days when it made a net profit of 16,000 cedis
in 1953 and 3,919,000 in 1973 to 281.908 billion cedis
last year.
Prof Asenso-Okyere said even
though GCB was doing well in financing manufacturing, mining, construction and
especially commerce, it is vital and prudent that "you increase your
support to the agriculture sector, which is currently receiving only 0.50 per
cent of total distribution of loans and advances for last year".
GCB made a profit after tax of 174.372 billion cedis, after making provision for the National
Reconstruction Levy and corporate tax. The bank was the best performer on the
Ghana Stock Exchange last year, registering a total return of 153
per cent, made up of 124 per cent in capital gains and 29 per cent income
yield.
In comparison to others it made an average yield of 45 per
cent on the market. GCB paid a total dividend of 500 cedis
per share based on the commendable performance on both the stock market and
profitability of the bank.
GRi…/
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Takoradi (Greater Accra) 02 May
2003- Miss Barbara K Gansah, a staff of Delliote and Touche, on Tuesday
said the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom
(UK) has allocated one million pounds for the Ghana Business Leakage Challenge
Fund (GBLSF) and is meant to reduce poverty by 2015.
She said DFID also hopes to improve efforts at basic health
care and universal access to primary education by the same year. Miss Gansah said these in an interview with the GNA in Takoradi. She said the
Miss Gansah said the DFID and
GBLSF grant covered fees for transfer, use of related skills, cost of travel
and accommodation, licensing, royalties, training course fees, and relevant
legal and certification. She said the grant was mainly for new businesses but
existing ones could be considered, based on their accounting, editing and
regular running course since the fund does not cater for such expenses.
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Inability to fully utilise trade opportunities
Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 02 May 2003- A Director of
the Ministry of Trade and Industry has stated that the low levels of production
of exportable commodities has accounted for the inability of several African
countries to fully utilise the trade opportunities opened to them by the United
States and European Union (EU).
W. Kofi Larbi,
Director, Multilateral Division of the Ministry, explained that the reason why
a number of African countries are unable to produce enough commodities to meet
demands of markets opened to them in the
Larbi made the statement when he
spoke on the topic, "An overview of the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) and general principles of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)"
at a day's seminar organised by the Ghana Standards Board in
The seminar, which seeks to discuss the WATO agreements and
sponsored by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), was
attended by 60 participants made up of stakeholders in the export industrial
concern as well as agriculturists and NGOs in the Ashanti Region.
It was designed to
discuss and educate stakeholders on the WATO agreements and various issues
related to international trade. Larbi, however, said,
"aware of these obstacles, the government had now
instituted a number of measures to address them and possibly remove them".
The measures include the introduction of the Export
Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) and schemes to encourage people to
produce more non-traditional crops and more tree crops like cashew. Speaking on
"WATO agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT)", Miss Genevieve
Baah, a Scientific Officer of the Ghana Standards
Board, made it clear that TBT agreements do not operate in isolation but rather
they take into account the existence of legitimate divergences of taste, income
as well as geographical factors.
"For this reasons, the agreement accords to members a
high degree of flexibility in the preparation, adoption and application of
their national technical regulations", she stressed.
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GOG and CIDA hold bilateral consultations
Accra (Greater Accra) 02 May 2003- The Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA) has shifted its support to the Government of Ghana from project
lending to programme lending to enable government to work within its priorities
for the Poverty Reduction Programme.
This forms part of CIDA's revised
programmes to assist the Government to improve on its Poverty Reduction
Strategies.
This came up during bilateral consultations between CIDA and
Government of Ghana (GOG) on Wednesday to review the CIDA programme and ensure
its integration with government's agenda.
The main areas highlighted during the consultations included
decentralisation, public sector compensation, accountability and good
governance and to enhance capacity at the district level to ensure the
channelling of increased resources through the District Wide Assistance
Approach.
Participants also stressed the need to specifically feed
into the annual budget and activities of the Ministries' Department and
Agencies (MDA's), poverty reduction priorities
for areas, including the three northern regions and to increase the sense of responsibility and transparency by all parties.
Yaw Osafo Marfo,
Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said the decision of
The observance of a mutually agreed code of conduct by government and the Donor Partners under the Broad Budgetary Support Framework would also ensure compliance on both sides, he added.
Osafo Marfo
said the bilateral consultations, the first to be held after a break of almost
six years, showed the commitment of the two countries to ensure that
He said government is working hard at the macro economic
front to ensure that its visions materialised, adding, "we have put in
place a public management finance system to have a proper control over
government expenditure''.
Osafo Marfo
said for transparency and accountability, government had put four bills before
parliament including procurement, finance administration and central internal
audit to which, when passed would improve the public administration system and
strengthen the donor budget.
He said the link between some of the Ministries and the
districts were missing making information flow on how monies are used from the
HIPC fund inaccessible adding for instance that the Ministries of Health and
Education had to depend on the Ministry of Local Government and Rural
Development for their statistics. "Government is putting resources
together to make the District Assemblies function effectively" he added.
Archie Book, Regional Director of CIDA, said an Action Plan
was being designed to initiate and improve on the donor budget to make it
effective. He called on government to make a distinction between regional and
district spending to make its donor budget coherent.
Book said the implementation of the Ghana Poverty Reduction
Strategy (GPRS) programmes must reflect in the budget and bridge the gap
between spending at the national level and the district level.
Jean-Pierre Bolduc, Canadian High Commissioner, called on
participants to avoid supporting sector programming that involved creating
parallel delivery mechanisms which otherwise did not respect the roles and
mandates of regional, district and sub-district bodies.
He said the district and community counterpart funding
requirement must be rationalised and harmonised to ensure they did not become
constraints to project and programme implementation.
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We have seen no need for change
Accra (Greater Accra) 02 May 2003- The National Petroleum Tender Board (NPTB)
on Wednesday said it has seen no reason for a change in the ex-pump prices of
petroleum prices after one month of work.
"We have looked at the trend for this month. At this
stage, we have not seen any reason whatsoever that there will be any need to
have a change in prices," Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah,
Chairman of the Board, said at a meeting in Accra attended by the Energy Minister,
Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom and senior officials of the Ministry.
He said the Board, as part of its task, is to announce
quarterly price adjustments and would look at the averages for the period so as
not to have big adjustments Prof. Addae-Mensah said
the Board has done a lot of work in less than a month since it was inaugurated
and it is still collecting information on the sector that would inform its
decisions.
Dr Nduom noted that the energy
sector is a difficult one whose performance has affected the financial health
of the country and threatening some banks. Ghana Commercial Bank is
particularly overburdened by the debt at the Tema Oil
Refinery.
He said the Board has a task of turning around the situation
in the energy sector, although, he said, it could be a difficult one. Dr Nduom said the liberalisation of the sector is on course
and would be continued.
He said, he could foresee a day when crude purchases would
not be done by the government, oil marketing companies would bring in their own
refined products, fuel prices would be displayed for everybody to see and that
the refinery business would not be confined to government alone.
Dr Nduom said the government made
several promises when it announced new petroleum prices in January and these
promises have to be kept. They include the promise that this would be the last
time government would announce fuel prices and that the NPTB, which would
review the situation quarterly, would be constituted.
On the TOR debt, The Minister said several steps were being
taken to clear it but he could not say how long it would take to clear it. He
said over the next three weeks, there would be discussions on the issue after
which government could indicate how long it would take to clear it and at what
cost.
Dr Ndoum said he has given himself
12 months to do what he could at the Ministry because in July next year serious
politics towards the 2004 elections would have begun. The first three months
should be used to take every difficult decision, he said, adding that if the
bulk of the work in terms of decisions, plans and initiation of action are
done, the following six months would not be wasted.
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Civil Servants urged to increase
productivity
Accra (Greater Accra) 02 May 2003- The National Secretariat of the Civil
Servants' Association of Ghana on Wednesday reiterated its the call on its
members for increased productivity, which leads to increased dividends and a
better standard of living.
In a statement issued in
"We are confident that Government would take positive
measures in order to ameliorate the suffering of its workers," the
statement said. This year's May Day is under the theme: Democratic Workers
Participation And Improving Incomes: Dividends Of Good
Governance".
The Association said in order to make it possible for civil
servants to continue to feel proud and active Government should heed their call
for the urgent correction of all the distortions that have crept into the Ghana
Universal Salary Structure (GUSS).
"As employees of Government, we find it unacceptable
that we Civil Servants are being sidelined when it comes to the issue of wages
and benefits. That is why we are also calling for the restoration of the CAP 30
Pension to Civil Servant."
The Association said it is "proud" that this
year's salary negotiations were concluded in an atmosphere of mutual give and
take and that Government had kept its word, which is one of the marks of
"Good Governance".
"As agents of social change in the society, the Association
will continue to champion the legitimate cause and aspirations of Civil
Servants through concrete and meaningful discussions and dialogue with
Government; the continuous consultations between us and
Government, which to us is a healthy way of relating to each other.
"That is why we are not happy that we were not
consulted in the matter of the use of our 2.5 per cent of our SSNIT
contributions towards a National Health Insurance Scheme." The Association
said laudable as the Government may view this proposal, they still feel that as
stakeholders and eventual beneficiaries of the proposed scheme, consultation
and participation should guide its implementation.
"As our Employer, we also expect Government to keep to
its pledge of ensuring a positive and realistic change in the conditions of
service of Civil Servants to enhance their standards of living."
It called on Civil Servants and workers "to continue
with the show of solidarity so far displayed and to positively rally without
fail behind their leadership so that together we will be able to achieve our
desired objectives."
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Cocoa production is sustainable
Accra (Greater Accra) 02 May 2003-Hope Sona
Ebai, Secretary-General of Cocoa Producers Alliance
(CPA) said World cocoa production was sustainable, considering the amount and
nature of research work currently underway all over the world.
He said notwithstanding the European Union's directive that
about 25 per cent of chocolate should be from butter substitutes, it was
imperative that producers devise a management scheme in production to ensure
that the market was not flooded if a certain production quota did not favour
them.
Ebai said an initial analysis by
CPA showed that between 150,000 and 200,000 tonnes of cocoa could be displaced
if the EU market continued its directive. He was briefing Journalists on the
forthcoming 14th Cocoa Producers Alliance to take place in
The event offered host countries the opportunity to showcase
what they have in the industry and how far they have grown in the industry.
Researchers from
The Conference, held every three years, is for researchers,
producers, manufacturers and technocrats to discuss current findings of the
cocoa industry and the way forward. Participants drawn from
It is estimated that over 500 participants from all over the
world would converge in
"It is important that farmers especially, improve upon
their tools and efficiency to increase their productivity and find cheaper ways
of production," he added. Ebai said
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The Human Development Index on which the report was based
measured a country's achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational
attainment and adjusted real income. The index assessed 173 countries, and put
them into three categories of high, medium and low human development.
The report classified 29 African countries, out of 36 as
countries with low human development.
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