The planned take off of the $24.98m assembling plant for agricultural equipment to be sited at Essienimpong in the Ashanti Region is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that Ghana is to establish an assembling plant for agricultural equipment to be sited at Essienimpong in the Ashanti Region and that the $24.98-million project will start immediately.
This follows a credit agreement signed between the governments of Ghana and India to be financed by the India EXIM Bank.
It will be executed by the Action Construction Equipment Limited of India.
The plant will assemble tractors and backhoe loaders and also undertake the fabrication of agricultural implements.
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, and the Resident Representative of the India EXIM Bank, G. Selva Kumar, signed for their respective governments.
In line with the project implementation schedule, the construction and installation of the plants and machinery, as well as other civil works, will be completed within 18 months.
Training programmes will be organised by experts from India for Ghanaians who will man the plant.
The project aims at bringing farm machinery within the reach of small and marginal farmers by popularising the use of agricultural machinery.
The newspaper says that the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI) has cautioned that the twin problem of inflation and the vulnerability of the cedi requires a collective and a well-coordinated effort to ensure that measures being instituted by the government yielded the required results.
The President of the GNCCI, Clement Osei-Amoako, who was speaking during a call on the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, at the Jubilee House last Friday, said “the current demand approach by the central bank in tackling the challenges was not yielding results due to supply sources of the problem.
Mr Osei-Amoako, however, commended the government for ensuring stability between 2017 and 2019, but said it was unfortunate that the recovery process after the COVID-19 pandemic was also facing severe challenges and thereby collapsing the business of members of the chamber.
The GNCCI delegation included the First Vice-President, Victoria M. E. Hajar; the Second Vice-President, Stephane Miezan, and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GNCCI, Mark Badu-Aboagye, and other members of the Chamber.
The President of the Chamber, Clement Osei-Amoako, led the team.
The visit was to enable the GNCCI to share its views on how to deal with the present economic challenges confronting the world and how it intended to assist the government in its plans to assist the business community.
“The fuel effect, food and energy and imported inflation are beyond the policy control of the Bank of Ghana and so the chamber wants to be abreast of what the government has done so far to resolve the issues so that the GNCCI can also support in that direction,” Mr Osei-Amoako explained, adding that “as a business support organisation, we find this approach essential to enable us to leapfrog our development stage.”
The GNCCI President also pointed out that the regulatory environments, high cost of capital, taxes and cost of electricity, among other obstacles, were undermining the competitiveness of businesses in Ghana. He said, “the Chamber’s evidence-based advocacy in addition to engagements with the business community and policy makers had shown that the critical issues affecting the private sector required a thorough micro-approach that would provide the enablers for the attainment of the macro policies being implemented by government.”
The Ghanaian Times reports that the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, says Development Bank Ghana (DBG) must manage its affairs prudently and raise its own funds on the basis of its balance sheet from the international capital market.
“This therefore requires the Board and Management to work hard toward getting an international rating for the bank within the shortest possible time,” he said last week during the launch of the DBG in Accra.
DBG is a development finance institutions and a whole-sale bank with the mandate to provide long-term loans to commercial banks to on-lend to Small and Medium-scale enterprises.
With the capital base of nearly $800 million, the shareholders of DGB are Government of Ghana, providing $250 million; KFW, providing 48.5 million euros; the World Bank, proving $225 million; the European Investment Bank, providing 170 million euros and the AFDB, providing $40 million.
Mr Ofori-Atta said development banks had been powerful instruments in economic transformation and growth in several countries.
“There are many countries where development banks have failed to live up to expectations and so in setting up DBG, we looked at all these experiences, including our experiences in Ghana and it is clear to us that the big differentiator for success is the governance of the institution and the professionalism with which they are run,” he said.
The Finance Minister said DBG was designed to be financially sustainable and it would focus predominantly on economic transformation, particularly industrialisation and value-addition in agriculture.
The newspaper says that the FBNBank has supported the Green Ghana Project by making a donation towards the activities planned by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and also taking action to help increase Ghana’s tree population.
The Green Ghana Project is an initiative of the Government of Ghana which started in 2021 and sets aside a day, Green Ghana Day, to create awareness across the country on the need for collective action towards the restoration of the country’s lost forest cover.
The initiative helped to plant at least 20 million tree seedlings on the Green Ghana Day this year.
FNBBank was invited to join President Akufo-Addo and the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor at the Efua Sutherland Children’s Park on Green Ghana Day, June10, 2022, to plant trees.
In response to the Government’s call, FBNBank contributed in cash and in kind by donating an amount of GH¢20, 000 and planting trees to support the Green Ghana Project.
The presentation was made to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and the trees were planted on 2022 Green Ghana Day at the Efua Sutherland Children’s Park.
Both activities were undertaken by an FBNBank delegation led by the Bank’s Head of Commercial Banking, William AmonNeequaye.
Commenting on the presentation, Mr Neequaye said “FBNBank considers the initiative of government which seeks to restore the country’s lost forest cover by planting trees very laudable. Over the years, FBNBank has engaged in corporate responsibility and sustainability activities which are aimed at delivering value to the country, its communities and people in a structured way.”
GIK/APA