The plans to float the shares of the special purpose vehicle (SPV) on the Ghana and the London stock exchanges and the launch of the NDC manifestos on August 31 dominate the headlines of Ghanaian press on Tuesday.
The Graphic reports that the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) is racing to float shares of its special purpose vehicle (SPV) on the Ghana and the London stock exchanges before the end of the year.
The main subsidiary of the MIIF and holding company, Agyapa Royalties Investment Ltd, will be listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), while its subsidiary, ARG Royalties Ltd, will be quoted on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), both through initial public offers (IPOs).
A Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Charles Adu Boahen, disclosed this in an interview with the Daily Graphic at Peduase, near Aburi in the Eastern Region last Saturday.
Supported by the Chief Executive Officer of the MIIF and former Member of Parliament for Kumawu, Mr. Yaw Baah, Mr. Adu Boahen, said the government came up with the idea of leveraging the mineral royalties of the country in order to maximise the value from the resource and not allow it to drown in the Consolidated Fund, without tracing what it had been used to do.
The newspaper says that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) will on August 31, launch its manifesto for the upcoming 2020 December general elections.
The National Communication Officer of the party, Sammy Gyamfi who disclosed this, said that the launch would take place in Accra.
Mr. Gyamfi said the time and venue for the launch will be announced soon.
He said the NDC’s manifesto, which had been completed long ago offers the best solutions to the problems of Ghanaians, hence encouraging voters to vote massively for the party’s flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama to win the upcoming December Presidential polls.
He said President Mahama will make primary health care free to provide free health care at the district hospital level to CHPS compounds.
The newspaper reports that the US-based Ghanaian law lecturer, Professor Kwaku Asare says expansion in infrastructure is not the solution to Ghana’s legal education challenges.
According to him, the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) approach to tackling challenges with legal education in Ghana shows the lack of seriousness on the part of the government in dealing with the issue.
“It is kind of surprising that after eight years, the solution they were able to come up with in their manifesto was one line talking about legal infrastructure. It connotes a lack of seriousness. We do not really see the problem”, he said.
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, promised to expand infrastructure to increase access to professional legal education at the NPP’s 2020 manifesto launch at the University of Cape Coast in the Central Region on Saturday.
But Prof. Asare said breaking the monopoly created for professional legal education to be administered by the Ghana School of Law is the best approach to resolving these challenges and not infrastructure expansion.
The Times reports that the government has been urged to urgently address gaps pertaining to the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJs) policy to make Ghana self-sufficient and a major exporter of food products in the sub-region.
The report says that a latest study conducted by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) with funding from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) into the PFJs, indicates that though the programme was widely praised by farmers, challenges relating to subsidies on farm inputs, market output and extension services remained a major setback.
“There is a high willingness and urge on the part of the farmers to feed the nation, but issues such as the pricing, bad weather, post-harvest losses and general cost of production with little government support are discouraging their resolve to continue their agenda to produce for feeding and production,” the report said.
In a statement released in Accra yesterday to disseminate the findings, ISSER pointed out that as compared to previous interventions of inputs distribution, the PFJs made inputs more available to farmers based on their purchasing power however, majority of farmers had little understanding of the programme.
The newspaper says that the National Identification Authority (NIA) mop-up says that the exercise for the registration of the Ghana card in the Greater Accra Region recorded a slow start yesterday.
A visit to some registration centres in the capital revealed virtually empty seats with few registrants undertaking the exercise rather allowing for smooth observance of COVID-19 safety protocols.
The exercise expected to run until September 8, 2020 is to allow for citizens, 15 years and above who were unable to register in the initial phases of the exercise across the country, to do so.
The mop-up will also take place in the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions from August 27 to September 11, 2020.
GIK/APA