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According to Dr. Assibey-Yeboah, Bawumia will make a good president.

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Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice president, will make a good president, in the opinion of Dr. Mark Assibey-Yeboah, a former chairman of the Parliamentary Finance Committee.

Speaking on a radio station in Accra, the former MP for New Juaben South praised Dr. Bawumia and the difference he has made in his role as Vice President.

Dr. Assibey-Yeboah stated, “He has done his part, and from what I can tell from looking at his resume, he will make a good President.”

The former legislator asserted that Dr. Bawumia will make a good President and expressed his confidence in him, saying that there is a significant difference between being a Vice President and a President. He also said that Dr. Bawumia’s current position as Vice President “is not really representative of” his future role as President.

Dr. Assibey-Yeboah also highlighted the contributions of Dr. Bawumia to the NPP, saying it “cannot be discounted”.

“He has paid his dues to the party. When you look at how our numbers have gone up in the northern regions; now in the Northern Region for instance, we have 9 seats and the NDC also has 9 seats,” he said.

“You cannot discount his impact. Even in Savannah Region, we have 3 and the NDC have 4. In the entirety of the old Northern Region, NPP have 16 and the NDC have 15. In recent past, the NPP had only 3 seats out of 31,” the former MP said.

 

 

We have complete faith in Ato Forson – NDC C/R.

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The Central Region branch of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has congratulated Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam Constituency, on his elevation to the position of Minority Leader in Parliament.

“Dr Ato Forson’s elevation is ample testament to his hard work and dedication to the cause of the NDC in Parliament and in Ghana in general over the years,” the regional branch said in a statement.

The former Deputy Finance Minister was named by his party to lead its caucus in Parliament on Tuesday, January 24, replacing long-serving Haruna Iddrisu, MP for Tamale South Constituency.

Though the decision has elicited mixed reactions within the NDC, with some MPs expressing surprise, the Central Region

 

Individual bondholders have no recourse in the event of a debt exchange, according to Senyo Hosi.

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Members of the Individual Bondholders Forum, who are currently working on the Finance Ministry’s Domestic Debt Exchange programme, have responded to the agreement reached between the Government and the Ghana Association of Bankers (GAB) on the new terms for the programme.

On Monday, January 23, the Ghanaian government and the GAB reached an agreement.

Previously, banks had rejected the government’s announced programme.

The GAB directed commercial banks not to sign on to the amended debt exchange offer due to uncertainty about the debt restructuring’s impact on the banking industry.

The association wants its concerns addressed before accepting the debt exchange offer, according to a letter sent to managing directors of banks and seen by 3Business. GAB told member banks that may want to consider the debt exchange in its current form to formally inform the association first before doing so.

“…From the uncertainty surrounding the programme, GAB recommends that all banks must stay any further movement on the exchange until our demands have been met. However, in the event that a bank may have to move forward to exchange, the MD/CEO must inform the CEO of GAB directly of the decision,” according to the letter sent to the banks.”

However, after an engagement with the Ministry of Finance, the Association of Banks that per the new terms, the participation of member banks is subjected to individual bank’s internal governance and approval processes.

Government reaches agreement with banks on new terms for debt exchange programme

 

 

Students of Mensah Sarbah hall sue UG over new residential policy

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Some students of the University of Ghana, precisely residents of the Mensah Sarbah hall have sued the management of the school for denying them access to their halls.

University of Ghana campusUniversity of Ghana campus

The students have contested this act by the school and described it as an infringement on their fundamental human rights to education.

Some students of the University of Ghana (UG), have been left stranded on campus following the university’s new residential policy.

On Monday, January 16, 2023, some affected students of Commonwealth hall were turned away by security personnel of the school from accessing their hall.

The new directive to reassign continuing students of Commonwealth and Mensah Sarbah halls to other halls comes on the back of numerous clashes recorded between the respective halls in times past.

Per the new residential policy, continuing students are supposed to occupy other halls apart from the Commonwealth and Mensah Sarbah halls to make way for level 100 and graduate students.

In the case of Mensah Sarbah hall, only the male continuing students will exit.

The students are however seeking the court to enforce these rights for their protection.

 

Africa requires new strategy to optimise investment – Yofi Grant

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Heads of African Investment Promotion Agencies, businessmen and women as well as academia will meet in Accra on Wednesday, January 25, to strategise on how African nations can add value to natural resources through Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to boost their economies and create jobs.

The discussions will be held during the First Assembly of African Investment Promotion Agencies (AAIPA) meeting at the Kempinski Gold Coast City Hotel, Accra, where participants would deliberate on measures necessary for the adoption of Common Trade Framework and Investment Protocol to enhance intra-African trade and Investment.

This will take place alongside the Africa Prosperity Dialogue series, to discuss ways to enhance economic growth and transformation of the continent.

The World Investment Report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2021, indicates that post-Covid-19 pandemic, Africa’s foreign direct investment increased from some $40 billion in 2020 to $83 billion in 2021, which was the highest the continent had achieved over the last few years.

Mr Reginald Yofi Grant, the Chief Executive Officer, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), at a news conference in Accra on Monday, said the Africa needed to re-position itself to attract FDI to boost investment in its numerous natural resources.

“This meeting has become quite important because of the developing landscape in the global economy. And not only that, but Africa is trying to forge a new narration on its relationships with nations around the world after the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused lots of disruption to trade and investments globally,” he said.

“I’m also representing Sub-Saharan Africa on the Board of the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies and my remit is to rally all the agencies in Africa for our mutual benefit, re-access the opportunities and re-position ourselves as major recipients of foreign direct investment.”

The GIPC Boss noted that even though Africa had many natural resource endowments, including lithium, bauxite, and gold, and with 70 per cent of the world’s arable lands, it was still a small player in terms of global FDI attraction with only 5.2 per cent.

He underscored the need for the leaders to leverage on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to trade among themselves since it was one of the largest trading blocs in the world.

“We need to take advantage of the AfCFTA for wealth creation on the continent. If you look at the 480 major companies in Africa generating a billion dollar per year, most of them are multinationals and so we need indigenous ones to grow and create jobs for the teeming youth in Africa,” Mr Grant said.

He lamented the low percentage of intra-African trade, hovering around 18 per cent, and urged African leaders to leverage on the huge population of the continent; 1.4 billion, for wealth creation.

 

KATH rewards hardworking staff, works to remove bottlenecks for efficient service delivery

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Professor Otchere Addai-Mensah, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), has charged the staff to put in more efforts to improve healthcare delivery at the facility.

“Management would have a big problem with anyone whose actions and inactions lead to a decline in the quality of services we render to the public,” he said at the 2022 thanksgiving service, reception, and awards ceremony of the Hospital in Kumasi.

“As a hospital, it is not enough to be noted for having the best qualified medical specialists and facilities in this part of the world. Equally important is we should be known as the most responsive patient-00centered facility through the provision of timely specialist care in a dignified manner to patients,” Prof. Addai-Mensah said.

For staff motivation, he said Management was doing everything possible to provide tools, materials and financial incentives for the staff to deliver top notch services to clients, while prioritising supervision.

As part of measures to achieve that, Management was granting greater operational and financial autonomy to the various directorates and units of the hospital and allocate a percentage of the revenues generated to them to resolve operational challenges, the CEO said.

In all 40 staff members were awarded for distinguishing themselves in the various fields during the year 2022.

All award winners received electronic gadgets and citations as prizes.

The three most outstanding award winners (overall best, first and second runners up) took home GH₵15,000.00, GH₵10,000.00 and GH₵5,000.00, respectively.

In addition, the Directorate of Surgery was named the Most Innovative Directorate of the Year and was awarded GH₵30,000.00 to perform even better.

 

 

 

Bank of Ghana, commercial banks agree to pay cocoa bills retail investors

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The Bank of Ghana says it has agreed to allow commercial banks to use Cocobod’s deposits/placements at the various banks to reduce the cash flow challenges on retail holders of cocoa bills, who may not want a roll over of their investments.

A statement issued in Accra said the decision followed a meeting on Friday, January 20, 2023 among the banks, Cocobod and BoG, during which it was agreed that all institutional investors will roll over their maturing cocoa bill for Tender 6155.

The meeting was held after the Bank of Ghana (BOG) failed to reissue on behalf of Cocobod a new six-month Cocoa bill to raise funds to cover a six-month Cocoa bill with face value of GH¢940.42 million, which matured on Thursday January 19, 2023.

The Bank said it went through the usual processes but, unfortunately, the auction failed and was severely undersubscribed, resulting in a shortfall of GH¢855.42million.

The statement said the Cocoa bills, like the Bank of Ghana bills, were designed as instruments to be held just by Financial Institutions.

It said unfortunately, it had come to the notice of the BoG that some financial institutions sold their instruments to their retail clients.

The statement said Cocobod had assured them that the outlook for the 2023 crop season was good, and Cocoa purchasing were ahead of last year.

“We, therefore, expect that this shortterm cash flow challenges facing Cocoa Board will be resolved soon to enable Cocobod meet its obligations to investors,” the statement added.

 

MCE sets record straight on Hohoe Market reconstruction

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Mr Daniel Noble Awume, the Hohoe Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), has described as a political propaganda a publication on the ongoing Hohoe Market reconstruction with the caption: “Thank You NDC”, making rounds on social media.

In a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency, Mr Awume said the the publication attributed the initiation and implementation of the Ghana Secondary Cities Support Programme (GSCSP) of which the Hohoe Municipal Assembly was a beneficiary, to the efforts of some National Democratic Congress (NDC) actors, who were in office during a particular period.

“The Hohoe Municipal Assembly finds it difficult to understand the rationale behind the publication, if not for the sake of cheap political propaganda,” it said.

The GSCSP commenced in 2018 for municipal assemblies that manage urban development in secondary cities, which provides incentives to improve their performance as city managers.

The statement said the programme was also meant for regional and national institutions to provide selected municipal assemblies with the support needed for effective urban management and service delivery.

The programme boundary of the eligible assemblies was determined based on a two-stage approach.

“The first state is to agree on a set of criteria, which must be met by an assembly before it becomes eligible to benefit from the programme,” it said.

“The second is to screen all the municipal assemblies using the same criteria and identify those that met all the said criteria.”

The statement said the criteria were municipal assemblies with total population of 100,000 to 250,000 people, and at least 60 per cent urban population, and must not be within Greater Accra Region or a metropolitan area.

It was instructive to note that the GSCSP was a programme being funded by the World Bank through a Loan Facility granted to the Government of Ghana and not as a reward for passing FOAT (Functional and Organizational Assessment Tool) through a World Bank accessment, it said.

The statement said the publication was false and a figment of the author’s imagination.

 

Twitter’s Blue subscription is now available for Android devices.

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The monthly option is $11, the same price as on iOS.

Twitter Blue has arrived on Android, and a subscription through Google Play will cost you $11 per month, just like it does on iOS. The social media website has updated its Blue About page to include Android pricing for all countries where the service is currently available, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Before this, you’d have to pay for a subscription via the web or an iOS device if you want to enjoy Blue’s perks on an Android phone. Take note, however, that paying through Google will cost you $3 more than paying through a web browser. By charging more when you pay via your device’s app store, Twitter is essentially passing the tech giants’ 30 percent commission onto you. If you don’t mind firing up a web browser to pay for Twitter Blue, you can score a year-long subscription for $84 per year, no matter what your phone’s operating system is. It’s a newly launched option that’s equivalent to paying $7 a month instead of $8.

A Twitter Blue subscription will put a blue checkmark next to your name on the website and will give you access to features not yet available for non-paying users. One of those features lets you preview your tweet and gives you the option to “undo” it before it gets posted on your timeline. You also get access to bookmark folders, themes and custom app icons. But as TechCrunch notes, there’s no telling what Blue’s feature list will look like over the coming months: The company could very well add new perks or remove them in the future. The checkmark will likely remain as one of the service’s main selling points, however, seeing as Elon Musk previously referred to Twitter’s “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark” as “bullshit.”

 

 

Debt exchange: The government hopes for 80% participation – Ofori-Atta

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Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has stated that the joint technical committee formed to investigate concerns raised by individual bondholders prior to the implementation of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme will complete its work by 30 January.

He stated that the government intends to launch the programme as part of its efforts to address economic challenges.

Speaking to journalists in Accra on Wednesday, January 18 after a crunch meeting with the bondholders under the umbrella body Ghana Individual Bondholders Forum (IBF) on Wednesday, January 18, he said “I think the clarity for all of us is that it is a voluntary programme. We expected to get up to 80%, which would still put us within the parameters.

“The Forum reiterated their concerns which are legitimate concerns for all individuals and for the country at large. In the same way, in which we met members of the Pensions group, we set up a technical committee and they will be meeting immediately [Thursday, January 19], we don’t want to miss the deadline that we have set. We are confident that we will get there.

“The clarity for all of us is that it is a voluntary programme, we have anticipated getting up to 80 per cent which will still put us in the parameter so we are asking everybody to join.

“The government continues to be a government that cares for people, lives and livelihoods as we saw in Covid, we protected and going forward too we will protect but also ensure the Community of the Republic crosses the Jordan safely, that is the challenge we have.”

The Individual Bonholders Forum had petitioned the Minister to be excluded from the Programme, which has been scheduled to be rolled out after Tuesday, January 31.

They claimed they have not been adequately engaged by government in an attempt to include their bonds in the Programme.

They accused the government of short-changing them especially as the Programme comes at a time a promise was made there will no haircuts to such investments.

 

 

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