The new survey report that ranks the Ghana Police Service and the Office of the President as Ghana’s most corrupt institutions is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Wednesday.
The Graphic reports that the Ghana Police Service and the Office of the President are perceived to be Ghana’s most corrupt institutions.
The most trusted institutions are the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), religious leaders and traditional rulers.
A survey conducted by an Afrobarometer study undertaken by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) indicated that the Police scored 65 per cent which placed it at the top of the table while the Presidency followed in second position with 55 per cent.
The Director of Research of CDD-Ghana, Dr Edem Selormey presented highlights of the survey at a second round of dissemination forum in Accra Tuesday (July 26, 2022).
The key findings of the report showed that the perceptions of corruption among public officials and public institutions have increased in 2022 compared to 2019.
Among key public officials, the police, the presidency, MPs, judges, magistrates and tax officials are most widely perceived as corrupt.
More than three-fourths representing 77 per cent of Ghanaians say the level of corruption in the country increased “somewhat” or “a lot” over the past year, a 24-percentage-point jump compared to 2019.
Fewer than one-third constituting 30 percent of Ghanaians believe that people can report corruption without fear of retaliation, a decline by four percentage points compared to 2019.
Afrobarometer is a pan-African, non-partisan, non-profit survey research network that provides reliable data on Africans’ experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance, and quality of life.
The newspaper says that the government has outlined immediate measures to enable households and farmers cope and support stable food supply in the country.
The measures include the placement of a temporary ban on grain (maize, rice, and soya) exports; and promotion of the the use of organic fertilisers and cultivation of crops such as roots which require less fertilizer.
The rest are monitoring of food and input prices to pick early warning signals of potential food crisis in order to take prompt remedial action; and finalizing of modalities for the haulage of produce from farm gates in food growing areas to the market centres.
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, announced this when he presented the Mid-Year Review of the Budget Statement and Economic Policy for 2022 on July 25, 2022 in Parliament.
Speaking on the status of implementation of the government programmes, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have combined to disrupt supply chains and increased transportation costs which are threatening food security globally.
“But, what the people of Ghana care to see is what their government is doing about it to ease the impact here,” he said.
The Graphic also reports that the Minority in Parliament has commenced a process that seeks to remove the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, from office.
The caucus, which has 137 members in Parliament, has so far gathered over 100 signatures to kick-start a Vote of C ensure proceedings against the Finance Minister.
This is in accordance with article 82 of the 1992 Constitution, which provides a detailed procedure of removing a minister of state through proceedings in Parliament.
For such a motion to be successfully moved, it requires at least one-third (92) of the signatures of all members of Parliament and considering the numbers of the Minority, meeting this requirement appears to be fulfilled.
However, the requirement for the motion to be supported by the votes of not less than two-thirds (183) of all the members of Parliament, in order to pass a vote of censure on a Minister of State, will not be met by the Minority in Parliament without the support of members from the Majority side
If the motion is admitted, the Minister for Finance will be the second Minister in recent times to have such a motion filed against him, following that of the Minister of Health, which is still pending.
The Ghanaian Times says that the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) says it is losing GH¢ 8.5 million in revenue every month from power theft and non-payment of electricity bills by customers, the Acting Managing Director of the company, Mr Noble Dormenu, has disclosed.
That, he said, was negatively affecting the operations of the company in its mandate to deliver uninterrupted electricity supply to the people.
Mr Noble Dormenu made the disclosure when the newly elected executives of the Northern Regional Chapter of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) called on the management in Tamale on Monday.
The meeting was to familiarise with the management and also to see how best they both could partner to help in the development of the region.
“You are the mouthpiece of the people and the region as a whole hence the need for you to help in educating the residents in the region to see the importance of paying for electricity,” he said.
“The public must respect our work by way of coming to pay for the usage of their electricity and stop stealing of power,” Mr Dormenu added.
“If the customers don’t pay for power how do we buy energy again to distribute?, he asked.
“The only way, we can be in good books or serve our customers better is to pay for their electricity consumption,” he added.
He said any electricity they distributed, they must get the revenue back and it was only the client who could give them that revenue.
The Acting MD commended the GJA and the media fraternity in the region for good relationship they had with them over the years.
The Chairman of the Northern Regional Chapter of the GJA, Mr Yakubu Abdul Majeed, said they were ever ready to partner with the NEDCo for the forward development of the region.
The newspaper reports that credit to the private sector is recovering to the pre-pandemic levels, reflecting commercial banks’ portfolio rebalancing.
According to the Monetary Policy Report by the Bank of Ghana, private sector credit increased significantly by 33.7 per cent in June 2022 in year-on-year terms, compared with 6.8 per cent in the same period of 2021.
In spite of the sustained price pressures, private sector credit, in real terms, recorded a 3.0 per cent growth. A year ago in June 2021, real private sector credit had contracted by 0.97 per cent
Meanwhile, the latest credit conditions survey of banks revealed tightened credit stance on loans to enterprises and households.
Notwithstanding these tight credit conditions across the industry, banks’ credit extension improved during the review period.
New advances to the economy broadened across the industry, with 20 out of 23 banks extending new credit.
Total new advances as of June 2022 was ¢24.6 billion (54.0 per cent year-on-year growth), compared to ¢15.9 billion (1.0 per cent growth) recorded for the same period of 2021.
GIK/APA