Economics

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has urged the Ghanaian media not to consider juicy headlines and breaking news at the expense of the future and integrity of the country.

He advised the media to take a second look at the power they wielded and the responsibility they owed to society and execute their mandate with utmost professionalism while abiding by the ethics of the profession.

The governments of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire are close to securing a $1.2 billion loan from the African Development Bank to undertake programmes and interventions that will make the cocoa industry attractive to the youth.

Six million dollars of the amount will go into the rehabilitation of the industry while the rest will be used to promote value addition to domestic processing of cocoa beans.

The Cabinet has decided to postpone the onemonth ban on fishing activities in the country, scheduled to start on August 7, 2018 to next year.

The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Ms Elizabeth Naa Afoley Quaye, made this known at a meeting with stakeholders in the fisheries industry in Accra yesterday.. . .

The Minority in Parliament has called on the government to, as a matter of national interest, suspend the renegotiated Ameri Power and Karpower deals, saying they are riddled with scandalous content and are a rip-off.

Presenting the position of the Minority on the deals at a press conference in Accra yesterday, Mr John Jinapor, the Member of Parliament for Yapei/Kusawgu and former Deputy Power Minister, said the government should rather make the details available for broader public scrutiny before going ahead with the deals.

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has revoked the licences of five banks and subsequently merged them into a new bank — the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited — to be headed by Mr Nii Amanor Dodoo of KPMG.

The entities — the uniBank, the Royal Bank, the Sovereign Bank, the Construction Bank and the BEIGE Bank — were found to have committed various regulatory and financial breaches that made them insolvent and unfit to continue operations.

Moments after the announcement of the revocation of the licences and subsequent merger of the five local banks by the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Banking Consultant, Nana Otuo Acheampong, backs the move by the central bank, saying it will bring certainty in the ongoing recaptalisation drive.

“This is good news because this move will protect depositors’ funds and strengthen the banking sector and make it more solid,” he stated.

Four people, including the former Director General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Mr Ernest Thompson have been indicted by the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) for causing financial loss to the state.

The others are Mrs Juliet Hasana Krama, CEO of Perfect Business System (PBS), John Hagan Mensah, former OBS Project Manager at SSNIT and Caleb Afaglo who was General Manager of Management Information Systems (MIS) at SSNIT.

The Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) has granted bail to Mr William Ato Essien, the founder of collapsed bank, Capital Bank after detaining him overnight.
EOCO invited Mr Essien on Tuesday April 17 to assist with ongoing investigations into circumstances leading to the collapse of the bank in August last year.

Its Executive Director, Mr K. K. Amoah, told Graphic Online Wednesday that the detention was “part of the investigation process.”

Issues of Power supply and cost, finance and labour continue to impede the growth of indigenous businesses and companies in Ghana despite government interventions in promoting industrialization and job creation.

The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) says, even though the Akufo-Addo government has abolished some nuisance taxes for industry, reduced tariffs and utility cost, industries still struggle to produce at full capacity.

A public policy expert is blaming the lack of a database for public servants as the reason some John Mahama appointees received double salaries.

Prof. Justice Bawole believes the existence of a system which captures data of all government workers, would easily detect such payments once the details appear in multiples.