The report that the Minister of Information has said that the government has commenced engagements with international television (TV) platforms to host more Ghanaian TV channels is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The move is aimed at increasing the access of Ghanaian media to international markets and broadcast Ghanaian contents globally.
According to the minister, the move formed part of the government’s plans to increase international viewership of locally produced television content and acquire a larger global audience for Ghanaian TV stations.
“The Ministry of Information is commencing engagements with global broadcasting regulators through embassies in Ghana to facilitate the hosting of Ghanaian TV channels which promote Ghana’s economic and investment potential on international transmitting channels.
“We believe this will assist Ghana’s investment and tourist potential and opportunities in global marketing,” he stated.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah disclosed this during the release party of CNBC Africa’s Greatest Star Documentary Film on Ghana last Tuesday.
He said the plan would also aid in the export of Ghana’s multimedia content to the foreign market and the growth of the global market share of local television networks.
The newspaper says that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has directed the Police Service to adopt innovative and intelligent traffic management solutions to help stem the increasing road accidents.
That, he said, would require that the police also formed partnerships with the private sector to increase the enforcement of road traffic laws and regulations.
President Akufo-Addo, who gave the directive at the maiden Kofi Annan Road Safety Award in Accra last Wednesday, identified indiscipline and disrespect for road regulations in relation to travel speed, driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, not wearing of seat belts and overtaking without due care for other vehicles as major issues that needed to be addressed to bring down traffic injuries and fatalities.
He gave an assurance that the government remained committed to bringing about the needed reforms in the area of legislation, institutional and logistical capacity to help reverse the trend of deaths and injuries on the roads.
The Kofi Annan Road Safety Award is in recognition of the role Kofi Annan, the late former United Nations Secretary-General, played in raising awareness of the enormity of the global road safety challenge and also encourage countries to make the roads safer.
Countries honoured for their remarkable effort to deal with the road carnage were Ghana, Nigeria, Morocco and South Africa.
The Graphic also reports that the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, has called for urgent reforms in the conduct of international credit rating agencies (CRAs).
He said doing that was important, given their ownership structure and the ramifications that their actions had on sovereign states, especially in Africa.
“We need to go into emergency mode to reform the global financial architecture,” he stressed.
Mr Ofori-Atta said this when he delivered the keynote address to open a two-day sensitisation meeting on the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) support for member states on international CRAs in Accra on Thursday March 17, 2022.
The two-day meeting, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, in collaboration with the APRM, will engage key stakeholders on credit ratings to discuss various challenges the member countries, including Ghana, were facing with the agencies, as well as their impact on corporate governance and reforms to improve competitiveness in the private sector.
It is being attended by representatives from the Bank of Ghana, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Ghana Stock Exchange, the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, among others.
The meeting comes on the heels of a recent rating by Moody’s, one of the international CRAs, that downgraded Ghana’s long-term issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings to CAA1 from B3 and changed the outlook from negative to stable.
The Ghanaian Times says that the ex-pump price of petrol and diesel has shot up by a record 18.2 per cent Wednesday afternoon, March, 16, 2022.
It quoted the Ghana News Agency report that observed that some Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) adjusted their rates upwards from GH¢8.2 per litre to GH¢9.7 per litre, representing an increment of GH¢1.50 per litre.
The rate of increment in this pricing window is the highest to be recorded since the beginning of the year. As of January 1, 2022, both petrol and diesel were trading at an average GH¢6.30 per litre at the pumps.
Before March, 1, 2022, the rate had increased to an average GH¢7.50 per litre, representing an increment of 8.6 per cent in the previous pricing window.
The current rate of GH¢9.70 per litre indicates that fuel prices have gone up by some GH¢3.40 per litre since the beginning of the year, representing 53.9 per cent increment rate.
The continuous spike in fuel prices at the pumps has been largely blamed on the performance of the Cedi against the US Dollar and the increment in prices of Crude on the international market.
Before the commencement of the March 2022 Second Pricing Window (March 16 to 31, 2022), some market analyst, including the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) projected that the ex-pump price for petrol and diesel would cross GH¢10 per litre if the rate of depreciation of the Cedi and the situation on the international market persisted.
In the March 2022 First Pricing Window, the Institute for Energy Security (IES) found that the cedi depreciated by 4.82 per cent to close at GH¢7.17 to the Dollar from the earlier window’s rate of GH¢6.85 to $1.
GIK/APA