The report that $750 million loan the government secured from the Africa Export Import Bank (Afrexim) has finallly hit Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) accounts is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Tuesday.
The Graphic reports that $750 million loan the government secured from the Africa Export Import Bank (Afrexim) has finallly hit Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) accounts.
This also comes at a time when a new policy by the bank to purchase foreign exchange (FX) from mining, oil and gas companies also took off on a positive note, after one company sold $20 million to the central bank last week.
The two developments are now expected to revive market confidence by helping to calm anxious investors and reassure the business community that the central bank is cushioned to meet its foreign exchange (FX) demands.
With these, the cedi is expected to strengthen against some of the major foreign trading currencies from this week.
BoG sources said the moves were timely and would help to bolster confidence and ultimately slow down the pace at which the cedi’s value fell against major currencies.
“We expect some cooling off of the rate of depreciation of the cedi,” one person familiar with the development told the Daily Graphic at the weekend.
“It also allows BoG to improve its FX buffers so that we are able to supply more FX to clear some of the critical outstanding demands that the banking sector has not been able to meet,” the source added.
It noted that the support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was also expected to rein in other imbalances in the economy such as putting the government’s debt on a more sustainable path to help sustain the gains.
The BoG source said the two developments were “very significant” and set the stage to a stabilise the FX market in the coming days.
It said the central bank now expected to build upon those successes to improve upon its reserves.
The newspaper says that the ECOWAS Commission and ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) have agreed to strengthen ties on mutual interest for the prosperity of the people in the sub-region.
The two bodies made the pledge when the leadership of EBID on Thursday, August 25, 2022, paid a working visit to the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.
A statement issued by the Commission said the visit was to strengthen collaboration, expand cooperation and explore areas of mutual interest for the prosperity of the people of the sub-region.
The ECOWAS Commission Leadership led by H. E Dr. Omar Alieu Touray, on Thursday 25th August 2022, welcomed the management of ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) to the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria on a working visit to strengthen collaboration, expand cooperation and explore areas of mutual interest for the prosperity of the people of the sub-region.
This was the focus of the courtesy call on President Touray by the President of EBID, Dr. George Agyekum Nana Donkor where he congratulated the President on his successful inauguration and assured him of EBID’s support for his tenure.
The EBID President said the new leadership of ECOWAS came at a time when the sub-region is facing numerous economic and security challenges but given the public service record and diplomatic antecedent of the new President, the sub-region will surely overcome these challenges. He added that EBID was formed in 1975 but started operations in 1979 with a mission to support the developmental projects and programmes of Member States.
In his response, the President of the ECOWAS Commission, H.E Dr. Omar Alieu Touray thanked the EBID management for their visit and support for the new administration.
He stated that the new mantra “ECOWAS of the People” was created to deliver shared prosperity for the people of the sub-region which will be achieved through the four core strategies of the new ECOWAS Commission namely poverty reduction, economic integration, good governance and due process.
He added that to achieve these strategies, there is a need to build deep collaboration and strong institutions with the right resources and processes. He then solicited the support of EBID to make the objectives a reality during his tenure. Thereafter, the meeting progressed to a working session with the management of the Commission led by the Vice President, H. E Madame Damtien L. Tchintchibidja.
The Graphic also reports that Cashew nuts emerged as the only agricultural product that ranked among the top 10 leading non-traditional export (NTE) products in 2021, a report by the Ghana Export Promotion Authority has revealed.
It contributed 60.38 per cent of the total earnings from the agricultural sub-sector, 14.35 per cent higher than what it did in the year 2020.
According to the 2021 report, total value of the top 10 leading products amounted to $2 billion, representing 62.96 per cent of total NTE earnings for 2021 which stands at $3.3 billion.
The report noted that due to the potential of the crop, cashew nut had been prioritised among the integrated list of 17 products earmarked for attention as part of GEPA’s export development strategy.
It said under the National Export Development Strategy (NEDS), an approach had been adopted to add value to raw materials as part of the country’s industrialisation drive.
“The focus of NEDS is the integrated list of priority products. In total, the priority products on the integrated list are projected to generate at least $24.1 billion in export revenue by the end of the implementation of the NEDS in 2029,” it said.
The Ghanaian Times says that a total of 2,584“dormant” companies are to be delisted from the country’s register of companies for failing to file their Annual Returns and Financial Statements as directed by Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC).
They include private/public companies limited and unlimited by shares; private/public companies limited by guarantee, including schools, churches, associations, unions, fan clubs, professional bodies and external companies.
The exercise, which continues till the end of the year, is the second phase of the ORC’s clean-up which started earlier this year with the deletion of 2,788 out of the targeted 100,000 companies.
The Registrar of Companies, Mrs Jemima Oware, who made this known yesterday in an interview, said the exercise was being done in accordance with Section 289 of the Companies Act, 2019 (Act 992).
“The Section connotes that a Company can be stricken off the Companies Register for failing to file its Annual Returns on time or failing to notify the Registrar of Companies of a change in the Company’s Registered Office and Principal Place of Business,” she said.
According to Mrs Oware , the companies were given ample time to file their returns in compliance with a directive the Office gave coupled with the publication of their names on the website, yet they failed to comply.
The delisting, she said, meant that “those dormant companies cannot be electronically searched on or carry out any changes on their company information in the Register awaiting a full winding up after 12 years.
“Such companies can only be restored by an Order of the High Court to the ORC within 12 years after the publication of the strike off in the Companies Bulletin.”
Mrs Oware urged all defaulting and dormant Companies, whether in operation or not, to file their Annual Returns by 30th December, 2022, to avoid being removed from the Companies’ Register by the end of the year.
GIK/APA