The Vice-President’s charge to West African states to implement robust systems that will help cut the flow of financial resources to criminals who cause terrorism and political insurgence in the sub-region is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has charged West African states to implement robust systems that will help cut the flow of financial resources to criminals who cause terrorism and political insurgence in the sub-region.
He noted that Africa was losing an average of $88 billion a year to illicit financial flows, with a chunk of it going into the financing of terrorism and insurgency.
He said the rising spate of coups d’etat, terrorist activities and other acts of instability in the region in recent times called for increased efforts to plug the loopholes and deny the perpetrators resources to help end the menace.
The Vice-President noted that members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) could achieve that by strengthening their collaboration in the fight against money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) in the region.
He gave the charge in a speech read on his behalf by the Senior Presidential Advisor, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, at the closing ceremony of the 24th Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) Technical/plenary meeting and the GIABA Ministerial Committee (GMC) meeting in Accra yesterday.
Dr Bawumia cited the recent military takeovers in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso and the failed attempt in Guinea Bissau, as well as an uptick in terrorist insurgence in the region, as wake-up calls to governments in the region to step up their fight against ML/TF.
“Our responsibility to stop the flow of illicit financing is an urgent one, which will cut down the outflow of funds to these groups and channel same into our development recovery to improve the quality of life of our people,” he said.
The newspaper says that the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has said the proposed E-Levy is not regressive but a comprehensive system to get all potential taxpayers to contribute their quota to national development.
He said the rate of 1.5 per cent and the exemption of the first GH¢100 transfer per day meant that the tax was pro-poor and, therefore, not regressive.
He added that the levy, whose proposed rate had been reduced from 1.75 to 1.5 per cent, was the most effective way to widen the tax net and raise adequate revenue to prosecute the government’s agenda and provide jobs for the youth.
Mr Ofori-Atta gave the explanation when he spoke with the media last Saturday on the sidelines of the 24th meeting of the Ministerial Committee of the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), which he chairs.
He said the ongoing town hall meetings across the country had afforded him the opportunity to properly explain the dynamics of the tax to the populace, saying that it had been well received.
“Ghanaians are largely in favour of paying the E-Levy, contrary to the impression being created from Parliament,” he told newsmen.
Consequently, the minister expressed optimism that the government would be successful at securing parliamentary approval for the levy, which had initially been billed to take off on February 1.
The Ghanaian Times reports that banks operating in Ghana wrote off GH¢2.086 billion as bad debt in 2021, a 4.7 per cent decline over the previous year, the Domestic Money Bank’s Income Statement by the Bank of Ghana (BoG), has revealed.
In 2020, the provision for bad debt was GHc2.183 billion.
The provision for the bad debt was as a result of loan losses, depreciation, among others.
According to the Monetary Policy Report, asset quality risks have remained elevated this year compared to last year due to repayment challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as some bank-specific loan recovery challenges.
Subsequently, the NPL ratio increased from 14.8 per cent in December 2020 to 15.2 per cent in December 2021.
This was attributed to the combined effect of an increase in the stock of NPLs by 16.0 per cent to ¢8.2 billion, as well as a modest growth in the stock of gross loans by 12.6 per cent over the period.
The adjusted NPL ratio excluding the fully provisioned loan loss category however, improved to 5.8 per cent from 6.5 per cent in the previous year, an indication that the increase in the NPL ratio was due to a build-up of loss category loans.
The newspaper says that the National Service Scheme (NSS) is developing an electric job platform which aims to absorb all completing service personnel and match their skill sets for companies in need of their services.
The Executive Director of the National NSS, Mr Osei AsibbeyAntwi, who announced this at a stakeholder conference in Accra last Thursday, said the scheme was liaising with various agencies and institutions to ensure that a significant number of personnel who complete the service got employed.
The conference attracted over 300 principals and registrars of both public and private tertiary educational institutions to deliberate on the theme “Strengthening GNAA Database through Digitilisation for Efficient Deployment”.
Mr Antwi said the NSS had rolled out a new system to offer more service personnel with skills and hands-on entrepreneurial training to make them ready for the job market or establish their own companies after one year.
The system, he said, fell within the scheme’s new vision of ensuring service personnel became either self-employed, or employable to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country.
“Already, the scheme is in collaboration with some tertiary institutions and corporate entities that had led to the establishment of various models such as estate development, computer applications and software development among others,” he said.
He indicated that the Ghana Export Promotion Authority was also offering service personnel with entrepreneurial and other skills required to create products and services which could be exported outside Ghana.
Mr Antwi said though the scheme was not deviating from the dictates of Act 426 (1980), it was determined to be innovative to meet the socio-economic needs of the Ghanaian graduate.
GIK/APA