The plan to harness resources and increase trade between Ghana and Israel and the call on Ghanaian insurance companies to take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area and encourage exporters to insure their products meant for export are some of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Tuesday.
The Graphic reports that Ghana and Israel are harnessing resources to increase trade between the two countries.
Data from the International Trade Centre (ITC) map show that Ghana’s exports to Israel are negligible.
From a trade value of $49 million in 2015, Ghana currently exports just about $4 million worth of products to Israel.
The Director, Marketing and Promotion at the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Mrs Agnes Gift Adjei-Sam, who disclosed this during a webinar on “Ghana’s Non-traditional export (NTE) sector and exporting to Israel” on March 4, 2021, said $4 million compared to about $16 million from Israel was not enough.
“We have to interrogate the drop from 2015. But it shows that there is still a lot of potential for us to trade and we could look at how best to improve on business between the two countries,” she added.
Mrs. Adjei-Sam said products identified by the ITC that had potential in Israel included iron and steel, articles of iron, articles of textiles and clothing accessories, cereals, aluminium and articles thereof, fish molecules and other aquatic invertebrates, oil and oil seeds, edible fruits, nuts and cocoa and cocoa preparations.
The newspaper says that Ghanaian insurance companies have been advised to take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to encourage exporters to insure their products meant for export.
The move will promote and stabilise such businesses for the benefit of the owners and the country as a whole.
The Chief Trade Negotiator and Senior Technical Advisor of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mr. Anthony Nyame Baafi, gave the advice at a regional seminar on the benefits and opportunities of the AfCFTA in Koforidua in the Eastern Region last Friday.
The one-day seminar, dubbed: “Optimising AfCFTA for Ghanaians: Sensitising All the Regional Business Communities in Sync with the Opportunities”, was attended by Municipal and District Chief Executives (MDCEs ), entrepreneurs, sole proprietors, industrialists, representatives from the banking sector, insurance companies and small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), among others.
Mr. Baafi said it was important for exporters to insure their businesses because experience had shown that exports that had not been insured faced a lot of challenges.
The Graphic also reports that the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Association of Bankers (GAB), Mr. John Awuah, has appealed to the government to reverse a tax proposal that will exact five per cent of banks’ gross profit into the public purse to help defray the cost incurred by the state in cleaning up the banking sector.
He contended that the tax was ill-timed, wrongly intentioned and targeted, saying that if implemented, it would make the local banking sector the most taxed in West Africa.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic yesterday, Mr. Awuah indicated that the five per cent financial sector clean-up tax on gross profits, when approved, would make banks in the country unattractive to investors to invest in.
While describing the tax proposal as “shocking to banks”, given that the industry was not consulted, Mr Awuah said its approval would also limit the ability of banks to deploy fresh funds to businesses to enable them to recover from the COVID-19 scourge and also take advantage of the opportunities offered under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.
Consequently, he said, the GAB would engage the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority to withdraw the tax from being approved by Parliament.
The former Managing Director of the Universal Merchant Bank (UMB) Limited was expressing the position of the GAB on government’s proposal to levy banks to defray the cost of the financial sector clean-up, which it said was more than GH¢21 billion.
Presenting the 2021 Budget Statement to Parliament, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Majority Leader, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, said the financial sector clean-up exercise and the refund of money to depositors had restored investor confidence and protected the hard-earned savings of millions of Ghanaians.
The Times says that Ghana will soon become the first African nation to manufacture Hybrid Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Sport Utility Vehicle Aircraft (SUVA) for private and commercial use, Mr. Solomon Addai, Chairman for International Trade Council has said.
Mr. Addai, who is spearheading the programme said, managers of the company were expected to meet government by June – July to discuss how effective the programme could be implemented.
Mr. Addai made this known in an interview with the Ghanaian Times during the commissioning of a New Patriotic Party (NPP) Constituency office at Anyaa Sowutom last Saturday.
The company, he said, was a United States-based Aircraft Manufacturing Company, AXIX GP L.L.C., which intends to establish a new International branch in Ghana (AXIX GP Ghana Limited).
He said the company would be situated in the Greater Accra Region and would manufacture prospective technologies, including Hybrid VTOL Sport Utility Vehicle Aircrafts (SUVA), for air, land and sea military operations and training as well as commercial civilian “Air Taxis” for the new urban air mobility market for Ghana and Africa at large.
These hybrid aircrafts, he said, would be executed in the delivery of critical services to the public and the government, including daily transportation, emergency services, fire rescue, humanitarian and relief efforts, business transportation, cash transportation for banks within cities and towns as well as cargo shipping with a 40-ton capacity.
GIK/APA