The report that the United Kingdom government says that it will continue to support Ghana on its development agenda, particularly in addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The Graphic reports that the United Kingdom (UK) government has said it will continue to support Ghana on its development agenda, particularly in addressing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.
This will comprise both financial and technical support in the social sector, such as health care and education.
This was contained in the UK government’s response to the report of its fact-finding committee, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), to assess whether the UK should withhold its support to Ghana or not.
The response, which was released last Tuesday, said the UK government was deeply concerned about the impact COVID-19 was having on women and girls, with evidence that gender-based violence, child marriage and teen pregnancy were on the rise in the country.
The report is titled: “The changing nature of UK aid in Ghana.”
It said the UK government was also concerned about the impact the pandemic was having on the economy, “with economic growth in 2020 being reduced from 5.8 percent to 0.9 percent”.
The newspaper says that the Minister designate for Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Mrs. Mavis Hawa Koomson, says the defunct Special Development Initiatives Ministry was able to construct 426 dams under the One Village, One Dam initiative.
Mrs. Koomson, who was in charge of the ministry, told the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Thursday that the target was to build 560 dams in the five regions in the north.
She said, however, that out of the target, 471 were executed, out of which 426 had been fully completed.
Each dam, she said, was constructed at the cost of between GH¢ 200,000 and GH¢ 250,000.
She added that the One Village, One Dam, was not meant to give every village a project within the four years of the administration.
“We targeted to give every constituency in the northern region 10 dams for a start and that is what we did. This is because the number of villages within the five northern regions are more than 5,000 and so there was no way we could construct 5,000 dams over a period of four years,” she said.
The Graphic also reports that the family of former President Jerry John Rawlings called on President Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House on Thursday.
The meeting was to thank the government for the “befitting burial” accorded Mr. Rawlings on January 27, 2021, President Akufo-Addo said in a post on Facebook.
On Thursday, 18th February 2021, the family of the late Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings paid a courtesy call on me at Jubilee House, the seat of the nation’s presidency, to thank Government for the befitting burial accorded the 1st President of the 4th Republic on 27th January 2021.
The former President died after a short illness on November 12, 2020 at the age of 73.
The Times says that banks holding in Ghana’s domestic debt grew significantly by a little above GH¢7 billion to GH¢38.1 billion in the third quarter of last year, representing 28.2 percent, data from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has revealed.
This is compared to GH¢30.1 billion, about 29.8 percent of their holdings recorded in similar period of 2019.
According to the report the rising appetite for government bonds and Treasury bills by the banks was due to the increasing share of its domestic debt component.
Non-Resident investors the report said held GH¢25.5 billion of Ghana’s total domestic debt at the end of September 2020. This represented 18.9 percent of the entire domestic debt.
This is compared to about GH¢25.6 billion in the corresponding period of 2019, representing 26.2 percent of the share of domestic debt.
There had been fears that a rising share of foreign investments in the country’s domestic debt may not be a good idea, particularly in situations of global economic uncertainties.
The non-resident investors could easily liquidate their funds and that could put pressure on the cedi.
Importantly, the Bank of Ghana’s holding of domestic debt at the end of the third quarter of last year stood at GH¢31.2 billion. This represented 23.1 percent of the total domestic debt.
GIK/APA