The assurance by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, that the government is committed to building an entrepreneurial society to help reduce imported inflation is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Tuesday.
The Ghanaian Times reports that Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has stated that government is committed to building an entrepreneurial society to help reduce the imported inflation.
His comments come as recent data from the Ghana Statistical Service indicates that the continuous increase in transport fares and food prices across the country has pushed the national year-on-year inflation for April 2022 to 23.6 percent.
The figure is over 13 percentage points higher than the upper band of the inflation target for 2022.
The data also indicates that this is the first time in 29 months that inflation for imported items exceeded domestic inflation. Whilst inflation for locally produced items was 23.0 per cent, inflation for imported items was 24.7 per cent.
Speaking at the Minister’s Press Briefing in Accra, he explained that the only way by which imported inflation in Ghana can be minimised is if the country is able to raise more entrepreneurs to produce locally.
“Cabinet was quite precise about the budget and the theme of building an entrepreneurial society. So the GH¢10 billion intervention where you’re going to have people create their own jobs and have work to do is going to be important and enhance productivity towards this. Because of imported inflation, what are you going to do about food, fuel, and financing out there? The question is whether we can get our people to be more productive so that we move towards an environment where people are in control of their destiny.”
The newspaper says that Ghana is likely to face severe food shortages and hunger in the last quarters of 2022 and 2023, the Northern Development and Democratic Institute (NDDI), has said.
The NDDI explained there would be severe food shortages because government was not heeding to global warning on looming food crisis.
The Tamale-based premier liberal public policy think-tank revealed that the monstrous effects of COVID -19 on the global food supply chain and the entire global agriculture production targets was not completely waned.
It said the Russia-Ukraine war would adversely compound the food security challenges around the world, especially in countries within the Sub-Sahara Africa, due to shortages in natural gas and fertiliser supplies.
The think-tank, in a press statement signed by its Executive Chairman, Mr Mustapha Sanah, indicated that the Institute has conducted a snap pre-planting season assessment in 11 well known agriculture-advantaged districts in Northern Ghana between April 25 and May 12, 2022 which showed acute shortage of fertiliser for smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana.
“In some instances, fertiliser companies are selling at higher prices outside the reach of smallholders, citing lack of government’s interest in paying their previous supplies,” Mr Sanah said.
He advised government and the Ministry of Agriculture to re-assess the nation’s food security strategy and heed to the global call for governments in Africa to invest more in agriculture, especially fertiliser.
The Graphic reports that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has disclosed that Ghana needs to fill a $423 billion funding gap to shore up efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
The funding gap, equivalent to $43.6 billion per year, is a fraction of the total $522.3 billion required to facilitate the attainment of the goals.
The UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana, Dr Angela Lusigi, who made this known last Tuesday, said addressing the funding gap required effective partnership and resource mobilisation plans that would engage diverse actors, including the private sector and diaspora investors.
She stressed that development partners needed effective collaboration on how to leverage on the potential of resilient national institutions and sub-national actors to support Ghana’s transformation agenda.
“As the SDGs cannot be championed by one institution alone, it would be useful to reflect on the extent of inclusion of community, local, regional and national actors in the public and private spheres,” she said.
Dr Lusigi was speaking at a consultative forum on the draft report on Ghana’s 2022 voluntary national review, a document that details the country’s progress towards achieving the SDGs, which was organised by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC).
The review is an important part of Ghana’s strategy to achieve the SDGs that periodically provides data on key indicators that allow the assessment of progress and challenges.
The 2022 review delved into efforts being made to close the gaps and accelerate progress on attaining the SDGs.
The newspaper says that the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) has given an assurance that there is enough stock of kerosene to meet domestic needs for the rest of the year, in spite of some complaints from users that the commodity is not easily accessible on the market currently.
The Communications Manager of the NPA, Mohammed Abdul-Kudus, told the Daily Graphic in an interview yesterday that there was also enough kerosene to fuel the aviation industry for the next four weeks.
“We have enough kerosene supplies that can last for a year and about four weeks’ stock of aviation kerosene, so there can’t be any shortage at the moment,” he said.
The NPA’s assurance comes in the wake of complaints that there is shortage of kerosene, a subsidised petroleum product used mostly in the rural communities for cooking and lighting.
Following up on complaints that kerosene was scarce, the Daily Graphic went round some fuel stations and observed that the unavailability of the product was as a result of most fuel stations decommissioning their kerosene pumps to focus on fuel sales.
This is because the demand for kerosene has dropped due to various reasons.
Many fuel stations in Accra have decommissioned their kerosene pumps and no longer sell the product because people now have access to electricity and gas for domestic use, but some stations still deal in the product, but patronage has been very low.
Also, it was observed that for people who still rely on kerosene and are keen to patronise it, the product is not easily accessible and they have to travel distances to get their supplies.
GIK/APA