APA – Accra (Ghana)
The report that Japanese Prime Minister, Kishida Fumio, has committed $500 million to the “Accra Initiative” to help deal with the emerging insurgents of terrorists in the Sahel region and also secure peace and security in the coastal states in the Gulf of Guinea is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Thursday.
The Graphic reports that the Japanese Prime Minister, Kishida Fumio, has committed $500 million to the “Accra Initiative” to help deal with the emerging insurgents of terrorists in the Sahel region and also secure peace and security in the coastal states in the Gulf of Guinea.
He said the money would be provided within the next three years, and added that there would be more support for the initiative.
The PM applauded President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for his role in introducing the initiative and other efforts to secure peace and stability in the region.
“Economic growth would not be attained without peace and stability, he said”.
Mr Fumio announced this at a dinner held in his honour at the Jubilee House in Accra as part of his two-day official visit to the country.
It is the first visit by a Japanese Prime Minister in the country in 17 years.
The initiative is the pooling of efforts and intelligence gathering by coastal and Sahelien West African states to coordinate efforts to deal with rising terrorism cases in some member countries.
It is also aimed at strengthening security through the exchange of operational information and intelligence.
It was started in September 2017 by Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger and Togo, and later joined by Nigeria.
Mr Fumio is on a four-nation tour of Africa where he would hold talks with their leaders.
He is currently in the country after visiting Egypt in his seven-day tour.
The rest are Kenya and Mozambique, and will stop over in Singapore on his way back to Japan.
The newspaper says that the 2022 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey Third Quarter Labour Statistics Report launched in Accra showed that females make up two-thirds of the unemployed individuals in the country.
The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, emphasized at the report launch that the high rates of female unemployment were not solely due to their gen
He stated that the unemployment rate for females was almost double that of males. “Unemployment among females was close to twice of males,” he said.
In the first three quarters of last year, about 157,000 individuals, which accounted for roughly 13.2% of the labour force, experienced a spell of unemployment lasting one or more days.
According to the report, around 7.5 million individuals held their jobs continuously for three quarters out of approximately 11 million employees in each quarter. This suggests that roughly 3.5 million individuals were experiencing employment fluctuations over the three quarters, indicating vulnerability.
Another important discovery was that the likelihood of shifting from informal employment to unemployment is five times greater on average than transitioning from formal employment to unemployment.
In Q3, two out of every three individuals who were unemployed but had been employed in Q1 were in precarious employment during the first quarter.
The Ghanaian Times reports that the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Godfred Yeboah Dame, is urging courts across the country to impose stringent bail conditions on persons standing trial in illegal mining cases.
He said he was concerned that some accused absconded in the course of prosecution because the courts granted them lenient bail conditions.
Mr Dame said these in a statement copied the Ghanaian Times in Accra on Tuesday.
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice said that accused who do not abscond after the court granted them bail return to engage illegal mining, the offence(s) for which they are being prosecuted.
Mr Dame said the office of the Attorney-General and Department of Justice was currently conducting criminal prosecutions against 727 persons who engaged in illegal mining activities across the country.
The minister enumerated other challenges impeding speedy prosecution of alleged illegal miners as lack of interpreters in cases involving foreign nationals and unwillingness of witnesses to give testimonies in courts for fear of being threatened by accused who lived in the same community as them.
Mr Dame said another drawback to the prosecution of galamsey offenders was the “strange and absurd situation” where some judges fail to apply the new mandatory punishment for convicted persons and rather sentence them to a fine only. He cited the example of a conviction of some Chinese and Ghanaian nationals for galamsey by a Circuit Court in Tarkwa in 2021 where the accused were sentenced to a fine.
The A-G said that when the matter came to his attention, he instructed the Western Region Office of the Attorney-General to appeal the circuit court decision at the high court which appeal was upheld and the accused sentenced to 15 and 20 years as required by law.
He said a similar situation occurred in the Upper East Region with persons being prosecuted by the police, having been convicted in 2022 and sentenced to only a fine.
The newspaper says that the prices of petroleum products may stay same for the next two weeks despite reduction in the prices of finished products on the world market.
According to the Institute for Energy Security, the significant drop in the value of the Ghana cedi against the US dollar in the last two weeks might thwart the expected fuel price reductions in the coming weeks.
In its projection of petroleum prices for this pricing window, the energy think tank said data from the IES Economic Desk on the domestic foreign exchange (forex) market over the last two weeks showed that the Ghana cedi closed trading at ¢12.01 to the US dollar, from ¢11.55 at the start of the window. This led to a loss of about 3.98 per cent in value.
“Prices of all petroleum products monitored by the Institute for Energy Security (IES) on the international market fell, alongside the price of Brent crude over the last two weeks. Prices of Gasoline (petrol), Gasoil (diesel) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) fell by 3.56 per cent, 3.69 per cent and 2.37 per cent respectively, over the period. On the domestic front, the Ghana cedi lost a value of roughly 3.98 per cent against the US dollar, as monitored on the foreign exchange market”, it stated.
GIK/APA
