The planned launch of a 10-year strategic Capital Market Master Plan to deepen the country’s financial markets by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the ceremonial take-off of the construction of a GH¢5-million administrative building for the Head of State Awards Scheme are some of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Thursday.
The Graphic reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will soon launch a 10-year strategic Capital Market Master Plan (CMMP) to deepen the country’s financial markets.
The plan hinges on four main pillars; creating diversity of investment products and enhancing liquidity in the securities market; increasing the investor base (through investor education); strengthening the infrastructure and improving market services, improving regulation, enforcement and market confidence.
The Deputy Director of SEC, Mr. Paul Ababio, who announced this during a webinar on the theme, ‘Investing after the Financial Sector Clean-up’ yesterday said the commission had also broken down the strategic plan into three main strategic priorities.
These are education (public, employees and market operators), enforcement and market development.
“If you have rules and you don’t enforce them it can lead to a lack of confidence in the market. So, some of the actions we have taken recently are to show that as a regulator, together with other law enforcement agencies we will drive rules and regulations,” he said.
Mr Ababio said SEC was working to develop the capital market which would reflect in the products to be introduced over time.
“The master plan is tied to the real economy, so, we have mapped it to the various priorities which transcend the political cycle. Some of the priorities as a country are to increase manufacturing and the agricultural value chain.
“So, the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) is one way we are looking to help people invest in agric,” he said.
He said the SEC had also prioritised strengthening of institutions and the rule of law based on the country’s stable democracy.
The newspaper says that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo yesterday cut the sod for the construction of a GH¢5-million administrative building for the Head of State Awards Scheme, the Ghana Award House.
When completed in 36 weeks, the two-storey office block, which will contain a 200-capacity conference room and a training facility, will house the National Secretariat of the Head of State Awards Scheme.
The scheme is an affiliate of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Awards which are run in about 130 countries globally and chaired by the British Royal, Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex.
The President said since its inception in 1967, the scheme had changed and touched the lives of many young people, including some 750,000 beneficiaries.
He said as part of the effort to ensure that more young people benefited from the initiative, a befitting administrative office for the scheme was necessary, adding that “the provision of a Ghana Award House to serve this purpose is my commitment towards driving the agenda of the scheme”.
President Akufo-Addo said when completed, the project would help drive growth through the effective and efficient delivery of the scheme to more people in the country.
He said the project would put Ghana ahead of other countries running the Duke of Edinburgh Awards programme and make Ghana the second country in Africa (after Kenya) to have such a facility.
The President said the government would continue to bear the operational cost of the secretariat, which is under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff.
The Times reports that Golden Star Resources Limited, a gold mining company in the country, is investing an amount of $15 million in exploration in its Wassa underground mine this year.
The Chief Operations Officer of Golden Star Resources Limited, Graham Crew who disclosed this during an interaction with a section of the media in Accra last week Thursday to explain the Preliminary Economic Assessment on the Wassa underground mine, said the move formed part of the company’s expansion strategy.
He said the investment was three times more than what the company invested in exploration last year.
“Our intention at Golden Star is to become a leading gold producing company in the country through the development of the Wassa underground mine,” he said.
He said the prospects of the Wassa underground mine were high and the objective was to develop it into a modern and first class mine and go deeper than the Obuasi underground mine
GIK/APA