The launch of the €2-million funded national COVID-19 vaccination campaign aimed at increasing vaccine uptake and improving conditions for the effective management of the pandemic in the country is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Wednesday.
The Ghanaian Times reports that a €2million funded national COVID-19 vaccination campaign aimed at increasing vaccine uptake and improving conditions for the effective management of the pandemic in the country was yesterday launched in Accra.
Dubbed the “Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) National Risk Communication COVID-19 Vaccination Update Support Project,” it is a Ghana Health Service (GHS) initiative with funding support from the German Development Cooperation.
It is being implemented by GIZ in collaboration with Clinton Health Access Initiative, World Vision and African German Health Association.
Dr Dacosta Aboagye, Director of Health Promotion at the GHS, launching the project said there was still more work to be done as the country was yet to meet its initial target of 20 million population to be vaccinated.
“In Ghana, we initially set for ourselves a target of vaccinating 20 million eligible population. So far we have given out about 18.6 million doses and 25 per cent of the target being fully vaccinated,” he stated.
“It means we still have some work to be done. Risk communication and communication interventions are the surest ways to scale up vaccine uptake among other public interventions,” he added.
As such, Dr Aboagye said the project would cover sensitisation and public education, training, call centre activities, medical waste management, research and e-health.
“It is indeed a step in the right direction; a much needed and all-hands-on-deck endeavour we need to undertake for Ghanaians to be vaccinated,” he added.
Dr Aboagye further underscored that the project was in alignment with the government’s strategic approach used in the management of the pandemic.
The newspaper says that former President John Mahama has bemoaned lack of credible remedial plans have been put forward by the government to salvage the economy.
“Unfortunately, no credible remedial plans have been put forward by the government to salvage the economy and there is the need to urgently organise forums for the best brains in the country to arrest the situation,” he stressed.
The former president thus suggested that the government should urgently organize series of forums on the economy for the best brains in the country to arrest the situation, adding that “a national dialogue on the economy, bringing some of our best brains together will serve us well, even as we prepare for debt restructuring and negotiation of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme”.
In a statement issued Standard and Poor (S&P) Global Ratings indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has worsened Ghana’s fiscal and external imbalances and on August 5, 2022, it downgraded Ghana’s foreign and local credit ratings from B-B’ to CCC+C with a negative economic outlook which was due to intensifying financing and external pressures on the economy.
It noted that though the government had taken steps towards consolidating the fiscal deficit, including the recent passage of the Exemptions Bill, high borrowing costs and softening growth made it difficult to put debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on the path of downward.
The statement also reviewed the country’s economic outlook as negative after careful assessment of the economy which reflected Ghana’s limited commercial financing options, and constrained external and fiscal buffers.
According to Former President Mahama the continuous depreciation of the Cedi showed the mid-year budget review failed to achieve its intended purpose, investors still did not have confidence in the economy and had resulted in the economy being downgraded further.
He pointed out that there appeared to be no end to the problems with the economy, with recent downgrade to CCC+/C Junk status and steep depreciation of Cedi in recent days, clearly showed the mid-year review of 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy failed to win back confidence of investor community and Ghanaians.
The Graphic reports that a section of the business community has called on the government to urgently take steps to address the depreciation of the Ghana cedi against major currencies.
Those who made the call lamented the fall in the value of the local currency against major international trading currencies, particularly the dollar, saying the situation was badly affecting operations of businesses which had also made it difficult to market their products.
Speaking on behalf of manufacturers, the Business Development Manager of steel manufacturing company, B5 Plus Limited, Sandeep Sawlani, said it was crucial for the government to fix the cedi rate against the dollar, since every business depended on it.
“We import majority of our raw materials and now the prices have been increased by 50 per cent. This forces us to increase our prices which is a big challenge. We, therefore, expect the government to come up with a solution,” he said.
Mr Sawlani was speaking on the sidelines of the Ghana Corporate Brands Awards 2022, held in Accra last Friday, at which 26 companies and individuals were re-awarded for their exceptional services in the corporate world.
He said the government needed to do something to salvage the situation as soon as possible because businesses in the country competed with others in the West African sub-region.
The Business Development Manager of B5 explained that if the situation was allowed to persist it would make the business environment in the country uncompetitive, given the prevailing conditions in neighbouring countries.
The Head of Marketing and Strategic Management at Maxim Cosmetics Ghana, Eugene Markwei, reiterated the difficulty manufacturers faced in providing quality products at reasonable prices due to the exchange rate losses.
The newspaper says the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has resumed the accumulation of gold reserves after exiting the business more than 60 years ago.
The central bank added US$42 million worth of gold to its reserves this year, marking a successful return to an exercise that it last conducted in 1962.
Made up of 22,643.24 ounces (oz) of the ‘yellow metal,’ the now reserve gold was mined locally but refined abroad to the standard of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).
The Director of the Financial Markets Department at the BoG, Steve Opata, told the Graphic Business last week in Accra that the US$42 million worth of gold now represented the first consignment of locally mined gold to be added to the central bank’s reserves since 1962.
Mr Opata said although that was not the first time that the central bank was building gold reserves, it had not done that so since 1962.
The interview was to get an update on the exercise that was launched in June 2021 with the aim of doubling the BoG’s gold reserves while supplementing and diversifying the country’s traditional ways of building reserves.
In June this year, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, said the government had granted the BoG the first right of refusal to any amount of gold mined locally before the miners could sell.
The new order, he said, was meant to ensure that the BoG used domestic resources to build its reserves in preparedness for rainy days.
Giving the Graphic Business an update, the BoG’s Director of Financial Markets said the exercise had so far been successful, with local miners cooperating quite well.
GIK/APA