Ghana Earned $1.6billion From Tourism Last Year

Ghana earned about 1.6 billion dollars from tourism as the fourth largest foreign exchange earner last year after gold, cocoa and remittances from Ghanaians resident abroad.

Mrs Zita Okaikoi, Minister of Tourism, said tourism contributed about 6.2 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) last year.

She was addressing a press conference on the two-day 2010 Ghana International Tourism Investment Forum (GITIF) scheduled for Accra from July 26-27.

The forum being organised as part of this year’s Emancipation Day celebration is under the theme: “Ghana-Time to Explore: The Role of the Investor in the Tourism Sector”.

Mrs Okaikoi said as a service sector, tourism was labour-intensive and a major job creator especially for young people, women and indigenous communities who host tourists and created direct and indirect employment to 260,000 Ghanaians in 2009.

She said third quarter investment report for 2009 indicated that out of new projects estimated at about 267.25 million dollars, investments in the tourism sector was 55.61 million the second after agriculture of 99.08 million dollars.
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Obama’s Visit Still Generates Huge American Interest

GNA – Ghana continues to attract huge American business interest a year after the visit of President Barack Obama, United States Embassy in Accra stated on Wednesday.

“The Embassy has seen a 100 per cent to 200 per cent increase in the number of inquiries from American businesses seeking to do business in Ghana.

“This month two new airline services were inaugurated by American flag carriers flying direct to Ghana, tripling the number of direct flights between our countries each week from 6 to 18, and tripling the numbers of ports of entry for Ghanaians taking direct flights to the US: New York, Washington, and Atlanta.
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Ghana Ranked One Of The World’s Worst Economies – Forbes

Ghana has the world’s largest manmade lake and the 1-gigawatt Aksombo Hydroelectric Plant, built to supply electricity to Africa’s largest aluminum smelter. But the smelter has been idle since 2009, a casualty of low aluminum prices and persistent electricity shortages that have forced the government to divert the power elsewhere.

Ghana is a typical example of the world’s worst-managed economies: It’s a country that shouldn’t be poor, but it is. The West African nation’s gross domestic product per capita fell 9% last year to US$621, ranking it 154th out of 184 countries tracked by the International Monetary Fund, below resource-impoverished Haiti. With a US$3 billion trade deficit last year and $4.9 billion in external debt, Ghana is struggling to pay its bills even as it sits on some of the world’s biggest reserves of gold and bauxite, as well as considerable amounts of offshore oil, which is being developed by Anadarko Petroleum and others.

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MTN’s Revenue Bigger Than Ghana’s Economy

MULTI TELECOMMUNICATIONS Network (MTN), the leading 16-year-old African Telecommunications company with over 501 million combined subscribers in its operational regions spanning 21 countries in Southern Africa, West and Central Africa and Middle East, North and East Africa and which company took over Scancom, operators of Areeba in Ghana some few years back, is said to have had approximately US$ 16 billion in revenue from its operations in Ghana in 2009.

The market capital of MTN is approximately US$28 billion and twice the size of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP.) From the above, MTN’s market capital is obviously bigger than the GDP of Ghana which currently stands at just above US$12.9 billion.

Dr. Douglas Boateng, a South Africa-based Ghanaian and an unwavering PanAfricanist committed to making a real and sustainable difference in Ghana and the sub region who lamented on the situation, said Ghana, on the other hand, is over 50 years old and yet there is no single locally grown and owned company that has revenues close to US$1 billion even though natural resources abound and continue to directly and indirectly contribute to multi-billion dollar international organizations like ADM, UNILEVER, ANGLOGOLD, Cadbury’s EDF, among others.

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‘Ghana’s Most Respected CEOs’ honoured

The Chief Executive Officer of the Multimedia Group, Kwasi Twum, was among the business executives who picked top spots on this year’s Ghana’s Most Respected CEO rankings.

Mr Twum was the third Most Respected CEO whilst Messrs Prince Kofi Amoabeng of UT Financial Services and Ken Ofori Atta of Databank respectively took the first and second positions.

UT Financial Services was also adjudged the Most Respected Company whilst MTN and Databank were voted second and third Most Respected Companies respectively.

The prestigious event is organised by PricewaterhouseCoopers in collaboration with the Business and Financial Times. It is an annual event to engender good corporate governance and best industry practices in the business community.

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Ghana International Airlines Loses US$ 500,000 as a result of Volcanic Disruptions

Ghana International Airlines (GIA) has pegged its revenue losses so far as a result of the Icelandic volcanic disruptions at a provisional figure of approximately US$ 500,000.

The amount, the Airline says represents the cost it has incurred by way of lost-revenue for the past one week since the phenomenon begun. Globally, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates that the crisis cost airlines revenues of more than 1.7 billion dollars as at Wednesday April 21.

This, the association has emphasized is devastating for an industry that lost 9.4 billion dollars last year and was forecast to lose a further 2.8 billion dollars in 2010. GIA however resumed its operations on Wednesday with its first flight from Accra to the United Kingdom at 11:30 pm after receiving clearance from the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
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New International Airport To Be Built In Ghana

The Government of Ghana is to build an additional airport in the Western Region to serve the needs of the business community, especially the budding oil sector and other emerging business opportunities.

To this end, government has tasked the Ministry of Transport (MOT) to conduct feasibility studies on an identified location, which would lead to the commencement of the project early next year.

Eric Tetteh, Planning Officer at MOT, who announced this at the first meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Tourism in Accra last week, said the ministry would later this month begin feasibility studies in the area.
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Spanish Government donates computers to Ghana Immigration Service

Accra, March 10, GNA – The Spanish Government on Wednesday presented 26 computers with accessories and anti counterfeiting machines valued at about 58,000 Euros to the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) in Accra to boost it’s
operations.

Mr. Vicente Garcia Sanjuan, Head of Migration Desk, Office of the Director-General, Migration and International Relationship, Ministry of Interior, Spain who presented the items lauded the excellent and effective collaboration between Ghana and Spain in the fight against illegal immigrants and organised crime.

He noted that while legal migrations opened door to a world of opportunities, illegal immigration was dehumanising and helped groups engaged in human trafficking.

Mr. Sanjuan said criminal groups that engaged in organised crime usually left victims especially women and children in sexual exploitation, marginalisation, social exclusion and slavery. “The migrants sometimes make outrageous commitment, with members of organised crime that tie them or their families for many years,” he added. Mr. Sanjuan contended that it was the duty of authorities to fight against illegal immigrant and reduce the action of organised crime by ensuring that law enforcement agencies enforced laws on migration.
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ONLINE SERVICE ENABLES SUPPLEMENTING NEEDS OF FAMILY IN GHANA

Ghanamart Inc. introduces the new and easy means for Ghanaians living abroad to supplement the needs of families and loved ones back home through the use of e-commerce technology. E-commerce has over the past decade emerged as the new way to do business but due to some structural challenges the phenomenon has not quite taken off yet in Ghana and most African countries. Ghanamart provides a medium that embraces these peculiar challenges and provides solutions to a smooth e-transaction. It aims at becoming a one-stop shopping e-commerce website for people seeking to buy goods and services for family. Patrons just log on to the website http://www.ghanamart.com, and complete their transactions.

Currently, Ghanamart is offering cellphone units for most major networks in Ghana. With Ghanamart, once the sale is complete the recipient’s phone is automatically credited. This means there is no need for entering pin numbers before units are loaded,http://www.ghanamart.com is the only website that does the units transfer automatically in a transactional way. Customers don’t have to prepay on an account before using the service, payment is only made at time of purchase.  Ghanamart differentiates itself by offering exceptional and outstanding customer service, making the experience easy, yet secure, reliable and efficient. It also has a dedicated toll free customer service line for US and Canada customers, and a UK support line for customers in Europe.

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Attorney General Scrutinises Drafted Petroleum Bill

The government has drafted a Petroleum Bill which seeks to ensure that Ghanaians derive maximum benefit from the country’s oil and gas resources. The bill also contains a framework to achieve local content and 90 per cent local participation in petroleum activities in the country by the year 2020.

Currently being scrutinised by the Attorney-General’s office, the bill underlines measures which enjoin operators in the oil industry to conform to the ‘country’s laws, as well as operate within environmentally accepted limits, among others. In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Minister of Energy, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, said under the bill, a Petroleum Regulatory Agency (PRA) was expected to be established to oversee and monitor the activities of industry players as part of the government’s policy to ensure that Ghanaians derived maximum benefit from the oil find.

He explained that although the past New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration developed a policy which merged PNDC Law 84 and the Regulatory Framework, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had decided to separate the two to make it simpler, clearer and more transparent for oil companies to access and make decisions.

The minister said local content and participation referred to the level of use of Ghanaian expertise, goods and services, people, businesses and financing ill oil and gas activities. He said a key development objective of the government was to grow the economy to rapidly achieve accelerated development and industrialisation, adding that the oil and gas industry was known to contribute significantly to the strong economic growth of countries that produced the two commodities.

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