The report that the Speaker of Parliament has directed five committees of Parliament to investigate the activities of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NFBSC) and the Ghana School Feeding Programme Secretariat (GSFPS) is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Wednesday.
The Graphic reports that the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has directed five committees of Parliament to investigate the activities of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NFBSC) and the Ghana School Feeding Programme Secretariat (GSFPS).
He said the committees on Education, Gender, Children and Social Protection, Health, Food and Agriculture, as well as Finance, must report to Parliament the findings and recommendations on the feasibility and sustainability of the programmes of the two institutions before the end of October this year.
He said the school feeding programme provided great potential to accelerate the nation’s progress towards the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on hunger, poverty and malnutrition.
Delivering an official communication on the floor of Parliament on the NFBSC and the GSFPS, Mr Bagbin said it was critical that the House addressed issues affecting the efficient implementation of the programme as matters of national priority.
That, he said, would help to institute realistic and sustainable measures to avert a possible recurrence of challenges in the future.
The Speaker said as matter of concern and of public interest, his attention had been drawn to the recent protest and strike action by caterers of the School Feeding Programme.
The development, he said, required urgent attention in order to ensure that food, an essential requirement for life itself, was made readily available to the vulnerable children of school age.
Mr Bagbin said school feeding programme caterers, who ceased operations in May this year, had requested that their grants be increased from 0.97 pesewas to GHc3 per child per meal.
The newspaper says says that only Ghanaian candidates are left to write the West African Senior High School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), scheduled from August 1 to September 27, 2022.
This is because the other four-member countries of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) — Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia — have returned to the May/June calendar and had administered the WASSCE for their school candidates from May 9 to June 24, this year.
The four countries have had their academic calendars streamlined to enable them to write the examination in May/June, as Ghana sticks to the ‘new normal’ calendar occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Notwithstanding the late sitting, Ghanaian candidates will still compete for the National Distinction Award and the WAEC Excellence Award with candidates from those countries.
“Our candidates will still compete for the National Distinction Award and the WAEC Excellence Award, which is normally competed for by all candidates in the five-member countries,” the Head of the Ghana National Office of WAEC, Wendy Enyonam Addy-Lamptey, said.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic, Mrs Addy-Lamptey explained that because candidates in the country started their academic year on February 7, this year, as a result of the new semester system, they were unable to subscribe to the examination.
She explained that considering the beginning of the 2022 academic year, the time was too short for the candidates to write the WASSCE in May/June.
“The time was too short and the candidates would not have adequately prepared for the examination and so the Ministry of Education requested that it be conducted for them in August and September 2022.
“Following from that, Ghanaian candidates will write a Ghana-only version of the WASSCE for School Candidates, starting from August 1 and ending on September 27,” she explained.
The Graphic also reports that the founder of Tony Elumelu Foundation and Group chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu, has said banks in Africa have the financial mussle to support governments on the continent to accelrate their infrastructure development.
He said banks were also ready to help provide funding at reasonable rates to help with programmes that would alleviate poverty and build the capacities of the youth to contribute their quota to economic transformation.
Mr Elumelu said this in an answer to a question from the Graphic Business during a media encounter shortly after he formally launched the United Bank for Africa (UBA), Dubai branch.
The question was to ascertain whether banks on the continent such as UBA, were ready to offer more financial support to African governments to help accelerate their economic development.
“We at UBA are already doing that. We have financed a lot of infrastructure projects and supported youth entrepreneuship.
“We are ready to do more because this is our continent and we cannot close our eyes to the challenges,” he said.
UBA, on July 15, became the first truly African bank to open a new branch in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as part of efforts to help businesses in the region and on the continent to have easy access to trade finance and convenient banking services.
Located in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the move forms part of the bank’s vision to have a global outlook as it plays a significant role to bridge the world economy leveraging the UAE as an important hub for global trade and also a trade gateway for Africa.
Mr Elumelu, who launched the bank at a colourful ceremony at the Palazzo Versace Hotel in Dubai, said “UBA Dubai will serve our customers across the Middle East with a core focus on correspondent banking, trade and treasury, while harnessing the opportunities the region has to offer to unlock our untapped economic potential and support our continent’s development,” it said.
The Ghanaian Times says that a Bloomberg study has ranked Ghana 2nd among countries with the highest debt default risk in 2022.
The country closely follows El Salvador (ranked number one) in the Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking.
Ghana’s debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to Bloomberg, is estimated at 84.6 per cent by the end of this year.
This indicates that the nation’s debt will have surpass ¢400 billion by far before the end of 2022.
As of the first quarter of 2021, Ghana’s public debt had hit ¢391 billion (US$50.3 billion), the Bank of Ghana reported. As much as ¢40.1 billion was added to the debt stock, largely as a result of exchange rate fluctuation.
Together with Brazil, Ghana’s interest expense to GDP is projected to hit 7.2 per cent in 2022, the highest among the 25 countries, captured by Bloomberg.
This means the two countries will spend more money to service their debt in 2022.
Already, the International Monetary Fund has cautioned that more than 30 per cent of emerging and developing countries are at or near debt distress, with 60% from developing economies.
According to Bloomberg, Tunisia with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 87.3 per cent is ranked 3rd among countries that are in the risk of debt default.
It is followed by Pakistan (4th), Egypt (5th), Kenya (6th), Argentina (7th), Ukraine (8th), Bahrain (9th) and Namibia (10th).
Ghana’s situation prior to announcement by the government to seek IMF bailout was precarious as investors had perceived the Ghanaian economy as risky, therefore escalating the yield on Ghana’s Eurobonds.
However, since the announcement by the government to seek economic support from the Fund, calm has returned to the markets as interest rates have remained relatively stable, though there are still some concerns about the foreign exchange market.
GIK/APA