"No Political Party Can Win 2012 Elections ‘One-Touch’"

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Category: Politics

Created on Friday, 21 September 2012 10:03

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"No Political Party Can Win 2012 Elections ‘One-Touch’"

{sidebar id=10 align=right}The flagbearer of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, is emphatic the 2012 elections will go into a run-off.

The leader of the PPP said “they are going to work seriously all over the country so that no political party is going to be strong enough to win this election in the first round. Our goal is to work hard so that we will compete in the second round.”

“The PPP will hold the balance of power in Parliament, which means we are working seriously to place our members in Parliament to be the deciding factor in Parliament,” he told Accra-based Joy FM.

According to the former MP for Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem, the PPP has invested time and resources to strengthen themselves and are firmly on the ground competing with the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the biggest opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

He further said the PPP will definitely be one of two parties in the run-off of the December polls.

Dr. Nduom said “there is not going to be any one-touch victory for anybody. As a result of that we are taking our shots, we are taking our territory and we are deciding where we are putting our time in.”

Dr. Nduom asked Ghanaians to give the PPP the opportunity on December 7.

Meanwhile, President John Dramani Mahama has said the ruling NDC has been ordained by God to win the elections in the first round.

Source: citifmonline.com

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STC up for sale

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Category: Business & Finance

Created on Wednesday, 19 September 2012 00:00

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STC up for sale

The head office and transport yard of Intercity STC at the South Industrial Area in Accra is up for auction to defray a US$3,783,935 debt owed the Prudential Bank in the latest twist to problems that have plagued the company.

{sidebar id=11 align=right}A former Board Chairman of the company, Mr Stephen Sekyere Abankwa, is through the bank demanding the sale of the property to service the loan he contracted for the purchase of 45 FAW buses in 2005 which STC has defaulted in repaying.

The facility was used as collateral for the loan.

Mr Abankwa doubled as the Managing Director of the Prudential Bank at the time he engineered the loan agreement as the Chairman of the STC Board.

Auction notices posted at vantage points on the facility read: "Notice of sale of a property (STC) No. 1 Adjuma Crescent, Ring Road West, South Industrial Area, Accra. Property of Intercity STC Coaching Ltd. Ordered by the D/S Sheriff Commercial Court".

The notice said the public auction would be done by Goodwill Mart, a licensed auctioneer, on October 3,2012.

When the Daily Graphic visited the STC Yard Tuesday the place looked unusually deserted, with a bus that was scheduled to leave at 6 a.m. setting off at 8:30 a.m. instead.

When contacted, the Head of Administration and Finance of the company, Mr Nuhu Janskabar, said the total debt stock of the company currently stood at GH¢43 million with accruing interest.

Workers of the company, according to the Union Chairman, Mr S.K. Martin, had not been paid their salaries for the past three months.

Mr Martin said that had been the situation in recent years, as the company currently had only 35 buses on the road.

He said Intercity STC had been forced to shut down its Accra-Kumasi route, which used to be the busiest.

{sidebar id=10 align=right}Most of the workers with whom the Daily Graphic spoke appeared frustrated by the situation, not knowing the future of the company.

Mr Anane Frimpong, who is with the Accident and Insurance Division of the company, said the 45 buses which were purchased with the Joan facility could not last more than two years because they had not been tested before being purchased.

He said as a result, the company did not get value for the capital invested.

"The tradition here is that we order for prototypes of buses when we want to purchase them but the fleet of buses we bought did not go through that process so they were not up to our specifications and started breaking down just a week after we started using them," he said.

He also said arbitrary interference from various governments was responsible for the near-collapse of the company.

The Intercity STC has been in debilitating stress since 1997 when it was first divested under the Divestiture Implementation Programme (DIP).

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) currently owns 80 per cent stake in the company, with the government controlling the remaining 20 per cent.

The trust, in March 2012, told the government, through a letter copied to the STC Company Secretary, about its willingness to offload its shares, saying it was not interested in the debt-ridden firm.

The woes of STC, which was valued at GH¢7.2 million in 2000, began with the acquisition of the company by VANEF.

VANEF, unable to pay fully for the stated value of STC by the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC), approached SG-SSB Bank for a loan to enable it to acquire the largest public transport company at the time. SSNIT acted as a guarantor for the loan and subsequently the name of the entity was changed from STC to VANEF STC Limited.

Though VANEF operated the entire fleet of the transport company, it failed to pay the loan, leaving SG-SSB with no choice but to recoup the loan from SSNIT, the guarantor.

SSNIT, in turn, activated a clause in an initial agreement with VANEF, re-possessed the company and renamed it Intercity STC Coaches Limited in 2001.

However, since the acquisition, SSNIT has neither injected any significant capital into the company nor restructured its finances, operations and administration. This led to a steady decline in the company's fortunes and erosion of its working capital, plunging it into a mountain of debt.

The situation is compounded by the fact that the minority shareholder- the government, virtually runs the company, with SSNIT assuming a secondary role.

The net worth of STC dwindled from GH¢1O.9 million in 2000 to negative GH¢6.2 million in 2009 and its finances will continue to remain in the red if the company is not salvaged.

From: Daily Graphic/Ghana

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Rawlings has a point, the growth in corruption is a major election issue, so is Ghana’s GH¢28.3bn public debt

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Category: Politics

Created on Thursday, 20 September 2012 00:00

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Rawlings has a point, the growth in corruption is a major election issue, so is Ghana’s GH¢28.3bn public debt

Former President Jerry john Rawlings has once again injected some excitement into the December elections with the issues he raised in his recent meeting with members of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs.

{sidebar id=11 align=right}In our view, he was sincere about the issues he raised and the angles he took. The ruling National Democratic Congress was, until July 24, going into a general election with a leader who was, understandably, very unwell. Now, in President John Dramani Mahama, they have a leader who has, indeed, added “a spark to the governing party…” in a presidential contest which is, after all, between the two main political parties, the New Patriotic Party and the NDC.

We believe what was profound about what the former President said at that meeting was his observation on corruption. Corruption, the frightening acceleration in the debt profile of Ghana and the mad rush for loans by this NDC government are big political issues that are yet to make it to the top of the issues chart of this 2012 election.

Corruption and the national debt are threatening the future of the youth of this country and Ghana’s future, generally.

What are the facts?

Nominally, this NDC government has borrowed more money than all other previous governments put together managed to borrow in the previous 52 years. At our last check, the current Parliament has approved a whopping $14 billion of loan agreements under the last four years alone, with more loan agreements before the House, awaiting approval.

Nominally, in this government’s first three years alone (2009, 2010, 2011), its expenditure (grants and revenues) has exceeded what President J A Kufuor’s government spent in 8 years.

GH¢28.3 BILLION NATIONAL DEBT AND $14 BILLION LOAN AGREEMENTS UNDER 4 YEARS

{sidebar id=10 align=right}Again, according to the Bank of Ghana, the nation’s total debt as at July 2012 stood at GH¢28.3 billion, and still growing. Notably, this figure does not include half of the $14 billion worth of loans that have received parliamentary approval, awaiting disbursement, including the $3 billion China Development Bank facility.

President J A Kufuor left a national debt of GH¢8.9 billion ($8.2 billion). It means, under Kufuor, every Ghanaian, from the baby to the grandma, owed GH¢376. It went up to GH¢13.7 billion in 2009, GH¢17.2 billion in 2010 and GH¢23.6 billion in 2011, to the current GH¢28.3 billion. if shared among the total population, every Ghanaian owes GH¢1,132. The question is, what has Government done with all the money that has come its way since 2009?

The travesty of the last four years, regarding these massivfe loan contracts is that, very little, if any, value for money analysis was done, first by the Executive, and, secondly, no serious financial scrutiny was allowed to be done by the Legislature so as to evaluate and ascertain whether or not the nation was getting real value for its money.

RECKLESS SOLE SOURCING AND INFLATED COST OF CONTRACTS

The slapdash culture by which these loans and other public procurement deals have been negotiated by an economic management team, led, in most parts, by President J D Mahama, the reckless preference of his government for sole sourcing public procurement contracts, stuffed with inflated cost prices, have put the future of this nation onto a dangerous, slippery slope into unsustainable debt trough.

The recklessness with which the current government has treated the national purse under these four years should be a major issue of public concern, and we are calling on civil society and the media to focus a lot more attention on this. This reckless mad loan rush has unleashed the kind of corruption never before witnessed in Ghana.

Besides falling standards in education, it is the view of the Danquah Institute that the combination of this reckless mad rush for loans, spiraling national debt and inflated cost of public contracts pose the biggest threat to the kind of future we are building for the youth of Ghana. It is potentially a future pregnant with substantial difficulties; it is a future of arrested development and; a future of limited room for fiscal manoeuver.

It is our fear that, with more money chasing after fewer developments, the expected economic expansion would not be significant enough to generate the kind of incomes needed to pay off debts and, at the same time, undertake other statutory fiscal obligations such as paying salaries and meeting social spending imperatives, including health and education.

LACK OF VALUE FOR MONEY

Today’s edition of the Times newspaper, on page 12, reported (Parliament Demands Value for Money) on the recognition by the Legislature that loans presented to the House come without any certificate indicating value for money assessment. The Speaker was quoted as saying, “Parliament has oversight responsibilities for value for money in all loan agreements and we are interested in tracing how our monies are being spent.” However belated, the Danquah Institute is gladdened by this recognition by the constitutional body.

It is difficult to argue against Mr Rawlings when he says, “the corruption that is going on is so deep. Some aspects of this corruption are literally holding your national resources to ransom by just a handful of people.”

For example, Government stubbornly awarded a $1.5 billion housing deal to STX Korea, which came with an insurance tag of $264 million to build 30,000 “affordable” houses, most of them one bedroom flats, at an average cost of $50,000. In 2008, with inflation at 18.1%, the cost of building a six-classroom block cost GH¢80,000, but under this government, the cost of building the same classroom block is now GH¢260,000.

INFLATED COST OF BUILDING ROADS

The cost of inflated contracts is obvious on our roads. In the last 3 years, less than 1,000km of roads have been added to the road network. The NPP, on the other hand, built an average of 4,750km of new roads annually in its 8 years in office. The NDC is today building a kilometre of bitumised road at $1.6 million, when, under the NPP, just four years ago, the average cost of constructing a kilometre of the same road was $450,000.

Ghananians deserve value for money on negotiations done on behalf of Ghana, whether it is for loan agreements, public procurements, allocation of oil blocks, building contracts, or in the payment of judgment debts.

The NDC government has had plenty of resources at its disposal because of the expanded economy it inherited, record cocoa and gold prices on the world market, new taxes, together with the improved fiscal attractiveness that Ghana enjoys from being an oil-rich economy, however limited. The question is, what have they done with this unprecedented abundance of funds?

NPP SPENT GH¢31 BILLION IN 8 YEARS, NDC HAS SPENT GH¢35 BILLION IN 3 YEARS

For example, when it comes to grants and revenues, President Kufuor in 8 years, received a total amount of GH¢24.29 billion. In just 3 years, the NDC, on the other hand, has received GH¢28.25 billion.

For his eight-year rule, President Kufuor’s total nominal expenditure was GH¢31.24 billion. Compare it to the first three years of this NDC administration, where total nominal expenditure stood at GH¢35.11 billion.

We have seen some resources come in the way of this government and what they are doing with these public funds have not necessarily corresponded with the amount of resources coming their way.

This is a dangerous trend and the public must focus more on this future-bursting development. Government, the President and his appointees have a responsibility to explain to the electorate what they have done with all the resources that have come their way.

We cannot disagree with former President Rawlings when he says, “If you mean well to want to fight corruption, if you are not going to devote 30, 40 per cent of your time to fighting corruption from within your own government, you will fail.” More importantly, you would be failing Ghanaians, failing Ghana.

Source: thestatesmanonline

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Spare us the unfortunate statements; Most Rev. Prof. Asante replies Rashid Pelpuo

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Category: Religion

Created on Wednesday, 19 September 2012 00:00

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Spare us the unfortunate statements; Most Rev. Prof. Asante replies Rashid Pelpuo

The Chairman of the National Peace Council, Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante, has slammed the Deputy Majority Leader for suggesting that the country's religious leaders were dabbling in partisan politics.

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