Stability of Cedi is real-BOG
Five per cent of national budget for mental health campaign
The Governor
of the Bank of Ghana, Dr Paul Acquah, has stated that the stability of the cedi
against major international currencies is real.
He explained that the stability is a strong
market reaction to the recent policy to bring sanity into domestic liquidity
payments position. He said the stability has been achieved by limiting
borrowing by the central government and by shifting government's financing from
bank to non-bank sources through coordinated open market operations.
Dr Acquah was addressing a dinner dance at the
Banquet Hall in Accra on Saturday to round off activities marketing this year's
Bankers' Week celebrations of the Chartered Institute of Bankers. This year's
theme was "Golden Age of Business and Wealth Creation: Myth or Reality-The
Role of the Banking Industry".
Dr Acquah said monetary policy in the coming
year would focus firmly on strengthening the value of the cedi to help achieve
a sustainable growth in the economy. This, he said, will help achieve a durable
drop in inflation and sustainable reductions in interest rates.
He explained that this will increase confidence
in market activities and make investment decisions sustainable so as to
generate employment.
Dr Acquah said all must work to make the cedi
an attractive currency by putting in appropriate policies that will enable the
cedi to remain strong.
He said there has been a substantial increase
in savings and time-savings relative to foreign currency deposits, adding that
"this reflects an increase in confidence in domestic asset as the
macro-economy has begun to stabilise".
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Ghana's ECOWAS Executive Secretary hopeful, Dr
Mohammad Ibn Chambas, has called on political parties in Africa to conduct
their activities in a transparent manner to ensure stability in their
respective countries.
Dr Chambas said this at a ceremony in Accra to
launch a book titled "Electoral Commission with support from the Friedrich
Ebert Foundation (FEF). The occasion was also used to bid farewell to Mr Peter
Schellschmidt, the outgoing Resident Director of FEF and also welcome his
successor, Mr Joerg Bergstermann.
He said Africa has a myriad of socio-economic
problems, which need to be tackled but without stability, all efforts towards
solving them will be in jeopardy.
Dr Chambas, who is also the MP for Bimbila and
a former Deputy Minister of Education, asked Electoral Commissions (EC) 8to
ensure that they organize elections in a very transparent, free and fair
manner.
He cautioned that any attempt by the EC to
favour a party may also have devastating consequences which may result in
endless political unrest.
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The Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr
Maxwell Jumah, has endorsed calls for the Constitution to be amended to make
the position of district, municipal and metropolitan chief executives an
elected one.
He said such an amendment will not only make
chief executives more accountable to the people but will also reduce their
susceptibility to threats of blackmail and untimely removal from office by
detractors.
"At present, chief executives can easily
be removed from office if the government or two-thirds of assembly members so
desire. However, if people are elected to that position by universal adult
suffrage, they would have a full four-year term to implement their development
agenda for their areas," he said.
Mr Jumah was answering questions from group of
students from the Armed Forces Command and Staff College who were on a five-day
tour of the Ashanti Region as part of their course at the college.
GRi…/
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Govt creates Land Banks to offer affordable
houses
The
government is to create Land Banks in all the regional capitals to facilitate
the provision of affordable houses for the citizenry.
Land banks are lands acquired by the government
and provided with the needed utilities and infrastructure and allocated estate
developers and individuals.
Dr Thomas Fokuo-Agyapong, a director of the
Ministry of Works and Housing, announced these at the dedication of Habitat for
Humanity (HFH), Adom Affiliate at Danfa on Saturday.
The director explained that the government
would provide the necessary infrastructure such as roads, drainage systems,
water and electricity on the lands before they would be given out for the
building of houses. That, according to him, would solve the problem of
infrastructure and ensure proper development.
On compensation, Dr Fokuo-Agyapong noted that
part of the compensation would be paid in cash while in some cases houses would
be given out to the land owners after their completion.
The Land bank initiative, which is part of the
government's policy to provide affordable houses in the country, he explained,
was to encourage estate developers and also to prevent litigation on lands.
GRi…/
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The Committee of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has begun investigations into the car loans provided for Members of Parliament (MPs) in 1993 and 1997, reports The Ghanaian Chronicle.
Sources
within parliament confirmed that the office of the Clerk of Parliament has
received a letter from CHRAJ inquiring into the financial arrangements on the
loans.
CHRAJ
initiated the investigations into the car loans following a petition filed
before it by a Ghanaian Professor at the University of Florida in the United
States, Stephen K. Asare, on October 24.
Professor
Asare, who is based in Gainesville, Florida, has petitioned CHRAJ to look into
the terms under which the car loans were contracted for the MPs, arguing that
the alleged facility were gifts disguised as loans.
According
to him, the loans were nothing short of “a bipartisan raid on the consolidated
fund”. He argued that though he does not have access to the terms of the 1993
and 97 contracts on the car loans, information within the public realm suggests
that the reported loans cannot be loans.
According
to him, interest rates in 1997 were over 50 per cent, and with MPs taking a
principal loan of $15,000 each, they must be paying at least $630 a month to
repay the loan if indeed what they got were loans.
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Five per cent of national budget for mental health
campaign
With the increasing rate of mental ill health, which is hampering development five per cent of the country’s budget would be spent on the mental health campaign awareness.
It is estimated that 12 per cent of the total population are encountered by the mental disorder through chronic anxieties, depression and drug abuse. Vice President Aliu Mahama disclosed this at the launching of the World Health report and mental health forum in Accra.
He lamented that the youth, who the future of the country lies with, have seriously taken to narcotic drugs. He stated that the identification of the drug awareness is the most important thing, which all the district assemblies have to embrace and support to impart knowledge of the anti-drug campaign into the youths and students in the second cycle institutions.
GRi…/
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Parliament
to sit without Ala Adjetey
When Parliament convenes tomorrow, the first Deputy Speaker, Hon. Freddie Blay will be in the chair to start the whole process of submission and the filing of amendments to the National Reconciliation Commission Bill.
This
submission and amendments would go on for a whole week before Hon. Peter Ala
Adjetey, the Speaker of Parliament comes back after the “cooling off” period to
see to the passage of the Bill.
This
conciliatory approach to the National Reconciliation Bill was reached after an
all-evening consensus building approach, which involved the leadership of the
House after the Minority walked out from parliament for the second time.
Nana
Akufo-Addo, NPP MP for Abuakwa, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice had
drawn the ire of the Minority in Parliament claiming he in a submission on the
floor has insulted them when they questioned the capacity of the President to
appoint members of the Commission.
GRi…/
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Indian
firm dumps dud drugs in Ghana
A foreign national representing an Indian pharmaceutical company in Accra as Business Development Manager for Africa has, blown the whistle on shady deals undertaken by the company in it’s drug sales in this country, the Public Agenda reports.
He has therefore asked the Food and Drugs Board to institute serious sanctions against the company- M/S Nabros Pharma Pvt Limited, one of the largest drug suppliers to the Ghana government, for consistently dumping sub-standard products on the Ghanaian health market.
In a letter to the Board copied to the Indian High Commission in Accra, Sreedhar Rao, himself an Indian, made a number of serious allegations against the company’s dealings with this country.
“The company is dumping near expiry goods to buyers in Ghana that resulted in near losses to some buyers. When the products are rejected by the authorities in Ghana, the management was pressurising me to solve the issue by unethical means than replacing them,” Rao said in his letter dated November 9, 2001.
He claimed that the company was supplying drugs resembling drugs patented by other companies.
“Please note that the company won the tender no. MOH/GSC2001/1. You are aware that clause 9.4 of the general specifications of the tender document, which says that the products have to be registered with the FDB before the products are supplied into the country. But I understand that the products are not yet registered with FDB, but the consignments have left Bombay port long back. I have reliable information that these products are also sub-standard,” Rao wrote in his protest letter.
The
Agenda says during its search at the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) offices in
Accra, Benjamin Botwe, Deputy Executive Secretary acknowledged receipt of Rao’s
letter and intimated that the Board will investigate the issues raised.
GRi…/
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Development Planning must be home-grown
A radical rethinking and shift from the old
planning and development strategies to a new paradigm where Ghanaians can
originate ideas and policies has been advocated.
According to the High Street Journal (HSJ)
participants at a public forum on the topic "Institutional Constraints and
the Effective Implementation of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy"
(GPRS) dilated on how the government can cope with the institutional
constraints that may hinder the effective implementation of the GPRS.
Some participants expressed concern that
currently practised development strategies appeared to originate from donor
agencies (or development partners) and are handed down to the developing
country leaders to consume, hook, line and sinker. Some radical observers,
including representatives from Jubilee 2000, an NGO, lamented the current
planning strategies which, in their opinion, are based too much on the
dependency syndrome-where projects are conceived outside Ghana and handed down
for execution.
The radical shift in position was led Ms
Eveline Herfkens, The Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation, who
visited Ghana last week. She emphasised the importance of capacity building,
which calls for a new way of doing business from both donors and recipients.
She said it is no longer a matter of improving the knowledge base, producing
institutional development guidelines, introducing new techniques for field
operations, setting up a specialized unit or providing training for staff. The
process, she noted, needs to be turned upside down-from donor-driven to
client-driven.
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The year
2000 was a momentous one in the African telecommunication calendar, because
that was the year all countries on the continent became connected to the internet
and that sub-Saharan Africa passed the threshold of one telephone subscriber
per 100 inhabitants. The problem in Africa is not only the lack of
infrastructure, but also, increasingly, affordability and the
"internetisation" of its wireless networks.
A new report released by the International
Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Telecommunication Data Statistics Unit at ITU
Telecom Africa 2001 shows that while the truism "Tokyo has more telephones
than the whole of the African continent" may have held 15 years ago,
today, there are more than twice as many telephone lines in Africa as in Tokyo.
The rapid penetration of mobile cellular
technology also updates the conventional logic that "all mankind should be
brought within easy reach of a telephone by the early part of (this)
century" as now, it is conceivable that within a few years, the majority
of African citizens will be within range of a mobile than fixed subscribers on
the whole continent.
The growth in total number of telephone subscribers
per 100 inhabitants from 0.51 to 1.2 from 1995 to 2000 follows the upswing in
the African economy and expansion of competitive operators on the continent.
However, another contributor is the marriage of mobile cellular and pre-paid
cards.
GRi…/