The report that 24 Ghanaians, the first batch of evacuees from Ukraine will arrive in Accra today aboard Qatar Airways is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that 24 Ghanaians, the first batch of evacuees from Ukraine will arrive in Accra today aboard Qatar Airways.
They are expected to followed by 220 others who have exited Ukraine and will be in Ghana within the week.
The 24 are part of about 460 students who have managed to leave the beleaguered Ukraine to neighbouring countries countries such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Czech Republic.
At a press briefing in Accra on Sunday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said the 24 had already arrived in the Romanian capital, Bucharest and officers of the Ghana Mission there had procured tickets for them to leave for Accra Monday.
She also denied reports that a train carrying some Ghanaian students out of Ukraine had been attacked.
The newspaper says that the World Bank has injected GH¢28 million grants into the operations of 400 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to support their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) disbursed the grants between November last year and January this year as part of the Ghana Economic Transformation Project (GETP).
They were disbursed to businesses in the agro-processing, food and beverage, health care and manufacturing industries.
The Country Director of the World Bank, Mr Pierre Laporte, made this known in a speech read on his behalf by the bank’s Lead Country Economist at the 7th IFEJ-Flamingo Awards for Business and Financial Journalism in Accra last Friday.
“For instance, we have been working closely with the Ghana Enterprises Agency as part of the Ghana Economic Transformation Project.
“Additional World Bank financing will also be available for technical assistance and grants to SMEs with high growth potential to improve their productivity and support job creation,” he said.
According to him, under the Tourism Development Project, the GEA also made grant funding available to SMEs in tourism, a sector that had been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and related travel restrictions.
He said beyond direct support to firms, the Ghana Economic Transformation Project was helping to lay the foundation for increased private investment in Ghana through improving the business environment, facilitating access to industrial land and bridging the gap in access to finance for firms.
The Ghanaian Times reports that the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPC) has expressed worry over the country’s low earnings from the global chocolate industry, especially as the economy is the world’s second-largest supplier of cocoa beans.
Data from the Financial Times show that less than US$2 billion of the total US$130 billion from the world chocolate industry goes to Ghana.
This represents just 1.3 per cent of the global chocolate industry’s worth. Meanwhile, the retail market value of chocolate is expected to grow to US$189.89 billion by 2026, the Sustainable Commodities Marketplace Series has projected.
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre CEO, Yofi Grant – addressing dignitaries and participants at the maiden edition of the Chocolatarium Business Summit in Accra, said this provides an enormous opportunity for local chocolate manufacturers to grow, as the potential of Ghana’s chocolate industry remains untapped.
He said the current rising demand for healthy and specialised chocolates globally must guide local small-scale processors to do something different to establish a foothold in the global market.
“The demand for chocolate is on the rise, with an increasing awareness pertaining to its nutritional and health benefits. This means chocolate-demand is anticipated to increase in the subsequent years. To cater for this, Ghanaian chocolate manufacturing companies have a responsibility to meet the demands of not only local consumers but also global patrons,” he said.
The newspaper says that the United States (US) is ready to provide Ghana with the knowledge, training, and expertise to advance its civil nuclear power aspirations, Mr Anthony Wier, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-proliferation Policy in the Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Non-proliferation has said.
He was speaking at the virtual launch of the U.S. -Ghana Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) partnership on Friday.
“Through this partnership, we are excited to build on already-established partnerships among the United States, Ghana, and partners like Japan, to provide Ghana with the knowledge, training, and expertise to advance its civil nuclear power aspirations. We hope to establish new relationships among technical expertsto tailor this partnership to the unique needs of Ghana, and will adapt our approach as necessary to ensure Ghana derives as much benefit as possible through the FIRST programme,” Mr Wier stated.
He said FIRST was intended to provide capacity-building support to partner countries as they explore and develop nuclear energy programmes to help achieve their clean energy production goals—and to do so under the highest international standards for nuclear safety, security, and non-proliferation.
Mr Wier added that the FIRST Programme was launched at the Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, 2021, by the Biden-Harris administration as one of the United States’ key efforts to promote energy innovation, increase access to reliable power, and build unprecedented global cooperation to confront the climate crisis.
In addition, Mr Wier noted that the FIRST offers a vehicle to strengthen U.S. co-operation with partner countries, such as Ghana, and experts from across the U.S. Government, industry, national laboratories, non-governmental organisations and universities co-operate actively to carry out this programme.
Through FIRST, he said the United States sought to work collaboratively with partners to address the climate crisis, spur innovation, conserve our environment, build resilience and drive growth for communities in a safe and secured manner.
For her part, U.S. Ambassador to Ghana, Stephanie Sanders Sullivan, said United States and Ghana had collaborated on important nuclear safety and security matters for more than a decade – both bilaterally and through the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“We’ve built strong relationships between key counterpart agencies and shared expertise between personnel,” she said.
She continued, “I’m confident that this partnership will be fruitful for Ghanaian and U.S. stakeholders, for the nuclear landscape, and most importantly, to help meet the energy needs of the people and industries of Ghana into the future. My team and I look forward to working together to implement the highest international safety, security, and non-proliferation standards while being responsible stewards of our planet.”
GIK/APA