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.

Mrs Okaikoi said the forum was expected to bring together local and international investors, practitioners, lecturers, and students of tourism to discuss the future of tourism industry in Ghana, stimulate investment in tourism to boost its development.

In addition, it would create a sustained forum for industry players to share ideas and exchange information on current issues and international best practices in the sector, while establishing a network of industry players for the benefit of Ghana’s tourism industry.

Mrs Okaikoi said participants at the forum would be given the opportunity to participate in some activities of the Emancipation Day Celebration such as the Assin Praso durbar on Friday, July 30, reverential night at Cape Coast and the grand durbar at Assin Manso on Saturday, July 31.

She called on Corporate Ghana, tourism and tourism related industry practitioners, the academia, Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies to participate in the forum.

“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.

“Ghanaian exporters can now take advantage of the increased cargo capacity that these flights provide, and more American investors can come to Ghana from the U.S.” a statement issued by the Embassy in Accra and copied to the Ghana News Agency stated.

According to the statement, between January and April this year, cocoa paste and cocoa powder exports to the US grew substantially following two significant US investments in state-of-the-art cocoa processing facilities last year in Kumasi, and the Tema Free Zones Area.

“These were multi-million dollar investments that employ hundreds of Ghanaians in highly skilled labor, and contributing significant tax revenues to the government of Ghana,” the statement explained.

The Embassy statement also considered trade and investment as two critical components of the two countries bilateral economic relations.

“Ghana exported 135 million dollar worth of products to the US last year, making America, Ghana’s fifth largest customer.

“Ghana imports 634 million dollar worth of products from the US each year, making America, Ghana’s fourth largest source of imports and in terms of Foreign Direct Investment in Ghana, Americans invested in 167 projects worth 2.5 billion dollars over the last 15 years,” the statement stated.

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.

“Ghana’s problems are mostly homegrown,” said Peter Allum, the IMF’s mission chief to Ghana, in February. Forbes ranks Ghana ninth on our list of the world’s worst economies.

As the world focuses on Greece and the rest of the so-called PIIGs–Portugal, Italy and Ireland–in their fight to reverse years of irresponsible fiscal policies, another group of nations make them look positively well-managed. Forbes screened IMF data for countries that have low and declining per-capita GDP, high trade deficits and high inflation, all indicators of bad economic management regardless of the country’s inherent wealth.

All have at least one trait in common: Their governments discourage private investment–and economic growth–through policies of crony capitalism, expropriation or arbitrary enforcement of the laws. That makes it hard to generate hard currency to pay off government debt and discourages citizens from investing in education to improve their own economic lot.

“Most of these vulnerably low-income countries are in a trap,” said Otaviano Canuto, vice president and head of the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network. “The climate is not conducive to investments, not only in factories and agricultural improvements, but in education.”

No surprise as to the winner of this race to the bottom: Zimbabwe, a country where the annual inflation rate hit the surreal level of more than 500 billion percent in late 2008 as the government of dictator Robert Mugabe tried to print his way out of his own mistaken economic policies. Before the fever broke last year, Zimbabwe restaurants felt compelled to post signs reminding patrons not to use the nearly worthless dollar bills as toilet paper. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate has since dropped to around 5% as the country abandoned its currency and allowed transactions to be conducted in U.S. dollars and other currencies. But it still was forced to import 500,000 tons of maize last year to make up for shortfalls in its once-bountiful agricultural sector.

Ranking fifth on the list is Nicaragua, the only Latin American country to show such a poisonous combination of poverty and stagnant growth. Nicaragua’s inflation-adjusted GDP fell 1.5% in 2009 and foreign investors have shunned the country since 1980s socialist President Daniel Ortega returned to office in 2007. Textile manufacturers have closed and European aid agencies balked at supporting the Ortega government after flawed elections in 2008. One reliable source of income in this socialist paradise: remittances from expatriates, which represented 13% of GDP in 2008.

In eighth place is Liberia, another resource-rich nation that has mismanaged its way to poverty through decades of corruption and civil war. The country has been relatively stable since 2005 and may achieve 6% GDP growth this year. But that’s a GDP of less than $900 million, with rubber exports the single largest source of foreign currency at $170 million. Registrations of foreign ships brings in another $18 million, hardly enough to make a dent in the country’s US$3.4 billion debt. Last year commercial creditors agreed to call it even at 3 cents on the dollar, possibly allowing Liberia to begin the cycle of borrowing and defaulting anew. Some economic growth is expected after Arcelor Mittal begins shipping iron ore from the Yekapi complex in 2011.

Eritrea also has a history of war, which might explain its per-capita GDP of US$363, ranking it 176th out of 185 countries and seventh on Forbes’ list of the world’s worst economies. Bad government plays a role, too. The agricultural sector employs 80% of the workers in this East African state, which gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, but generates only 12% of GDP. The ruling PFDJ party has “imposed an arbitrary and complex set of regulatory requirements” that discourage foreign and domestic investment, and frequently expropriates property, the U.S. State Department says.

“Poverty by itself is not a sufficient condition for conflict,” said Canuto of the World Bank. “But whenever you have a situation of conflict and poverty together, the country is trapped.”

Sixth-place Burundi, like many of the countries on this list, has another big problem: bloated government payrolls. The IMF estimates government wages account for 12% of GDP, but 63% of the population remains undernourished. The country, still recovering from years of civil war, needs $5.8 billion in infrastructure but will be hard-pressed to pay for it with just $68 million in exports–most of it coffee–and $275 million in imports last year. A 24% domestic inflation rate doesn’t help.

The global financial crisis does offer some signs of hope that perennially mismanaged countries can change their ways. Other than Nicaragua and Venezuela, most of the Latin American nations muddled through the crisis without their historical reliance on hyperinflation and default.

“That had a lot to do with macroeconomic policies,” said Canuto, who cited Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay as being particularly well managed. “Latin America has learned a hard lesson on the benefits of cutting this serial default behavior.”

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.

Dr. Boateng who was in Kumasi to launch West African Institute for supply chain leadership at the KNUST Business School, the first of its kind in the sub-region with a relentless ambition to be the de facto hub for supply chain human capital training and education centre of excellence within 5 years for Governments, their Ministries, NGO, State owned enterprise and private sector organizations, told TRUTH that said there has to be a fundamental paradigm shift to turn things around and pointed to supply chain management as a way out.

According to Dr. Boateng, Founder and CEO of Panafest International and President of Panafest Foundation, unless supply chain management concept is adopted, future generations in another 50 years shall still be talking about the same thing while the government goes around the world with a bowl begging for financial help and aid to supplement our national budget.

He has called on Ghanaians to assist in efforts at creating a de facto hub for supply chain human capital training and education centre of excellence. “We are all duty bound to make this country a much better place for the future generations,” Dr. Boateng said adding that socio-economic transformation it is not about NDC or NPP or CPP or any of the parties. “It is about Ghana and her future generations,” he said.

According to him, history had taught him that the current infatuation with oil was not going to solve our problems. “it will most likely not because we have not relatively managed to use the cocoa, gold, manganese human capital, bauxite, fertile soil to redress the serious socio-economic imbalances in our society,” he said . Dr. Boateng said if the Government is serious about addressing socio-economic problems and industrialization it must look at creating a chemical industry by starting o think supply chain management to be able to look at things from a different and long term perspective.

He suggested that the government should seriously consider corporatizing state-owned entities before privatizing them through supply chain management because the practice of privatizing them for next to nothing is not doing our country any good. “If the government wants to continue with the art of state asset disposals they must openly and transparently sell to locals via empowerment,” Dr. Boaeng recommended saying the current practice of selling off non-performing state owned assets has so far yielded relatively no benefits for society as a whole.

He said the issue has always been the interference and mostly the “appointment of square pegs in round wholes” adding that if there is limited interference from Government and competent and capable people are appointed and incentivized things will change in a relatively short space of time for these entities. Dr. Boateng noted that the Ghanaian economies are too small hence he need to revisit the dream of our founding fathers in building diversified industrial conglomerates like GIHOC.

He urged he government to start agglomerating certain organizations in selected verticals including transport to build strong balance sheets to go and borrow money needed to fix and improve these infrastructures. “The principle of breaking up into small pieces for better management does not work for smaller economies like ours. So far it has not worked for us and the Government of Ghana must consider a U-turn for the sake of the future generations,” he said.

Dr. Boateng also suggested that the private sector must also learn to work through partnerships so that stronger and bigger balance sheets can be created. He described Dr Nkrumah as an incredible visionary who foresaw these potential problems and found an antidote in industrialization and tackled it with the establishment of GIHOC for processing and value add; the Akosombo DAM for electricity, the Universities as industrial human capital feedback.

The industrialization vision plus our fortunes as a country started to go south with the unfortunate coup d’état in 1966 resulting in Ghana’s present predicament where GIHOC and associated companies are all virtually dead and sold off without managing to create major industrial alternatives.

The result, he noted, is that we are declared HIPC, we lost our position as the leading producer of cocoa, most state-owned enterprises continue to be sold to foreign companies because Ghanaians do not have the balance sheets to borrow, and /or there is lack of trust in the Ghanaian evidenced in our shops being filled with exports like biscuits from Sri Lanka, Cakes from Italy and Canada and Fruit juices from Cyprus, among others. Dr. Boateng indicated that Industrialization is a long term initiative and that the four year democratic cycle is not helping matters pointing out that the NDC has already started campaign for 2012 instead of the NDC focusing on building long term structures.

He said the use of 7-year planning cycles by Dr. Nkrumah was quite right and reasonable and called on policy makers to review and extend our democratic cycles to seven years for the President and say five years for the parliamentarians so that a bit more time could be spent on focusing on the economy rather than on politicking to stay in power.

According to him shorter cycles tend to work for the developed economies pointing to the remarkable achievement of South Africa over the last 15 years which comes as a function of continuity because there is virtually one party in power unlike the case of Ghana.

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.

Ghana’s Most Respected CEO
1. Prince Kofi Amoabeng, UT Financial Services
2. Ken Ofori Atta, Databank Group Limited
3. Kwasi Twum, Multimedia Group Limited
4. Tony Oteng Gyasi, Tropical Cables and Conductors
5. Alhaji Asumah Bandah, Antrac
6. Joyce Ayeh, Ghana Chamber of Mines
7. Philip Sowah, Zain Country Manager
8. Albert Ocran, Combert Impressions
9. Patrick Awuah, Ashesi University
10. Martin Mensah, Kasapreko
11. Ernest Bediako, Ernest Chemist
12. David Venn, Vodafone

Ghana’s Most Respected Companies (In descending order)

The UT, MTN, Unilever, Databank, Guinness Ghana, Multimedia, Nestle, Coca Cola, Zain, Ecobank

Story by Fiifi Koomson/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana

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.

The service is not a replacement for traditional money remittance services, rather a supplement to it. Patrons can spend under $5 to transfer phone units to friends, family and loved ones. This is particularly handy for surprises during events such as birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day etc. The service makes it easy to use credit cards on the website through the use of high level encryption technology. Added to the advantage of Ghanamart is the ability to use a credit card without paying any cash advance fee, which is the case when credit cards are used to remit money.

Ghanamart is in the process of adding and offering more services which will includes the ability to pay utility bills, buy prescription and other pharmaceutical products, buy building materials etc.

attorney general iddrisu

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.

“It is anticipated that the development of the oil and gas industry will be a source of accelerated growth; poverty reduction and” general prosperity for the people of Ghana. The active involvement of Ghanaians in oil and gas development through local content and participation has become a major policy issue of the NDC government,” Dr Oteng-Adjei pointed out.

Consequently, the minister stated that the government would seek to provide the enabling environment and opportunities for Ghanaians to benefit from the economic wealth that emanated from the activities in the oil and gas industry through the participation of Ghanaians in the ownership, operation, control, and management of the sector.

Dr Oteng-Adjei explained that his office would submit the draft bill to Cabinet for study and subsequently to Parliament for approval, while broad consultation with relevant stake-holders was currently ongoing on the framework on local content and local participation.

“We are acting as quickly as possible to ensure that all these structures are put in place before oil production begins in the last quarter of the year,” the minister said. He gave the assurance the relevant bodies in the country, including the political parties, were being given the opportunity to study and make inputs into the local content framework.

He said other legal bodies were also looking at the bill to make the necessary recommendations. He, therefore, debunked claims that the government had not put in place any legal structures to cater for the country’s oil industry.

Throwing more light on the local content policy, a Deputy Minister of Energy, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, said PNDC Law 84 only tackled issues on exploration and it was, therefore, imperative for the government to come up with more pragmatic measures to regulate the petroleum industry in a more effective manner now that oil had been discovered in commercial quantities.

In order to give effect to the implementation of the local content and local participation policy, these policy directions would be legislated by regulations and other such legal instruments, Mr Buah explained.  ”A dedicated Petroleum Regulatory Agency, with the assistance of independent national local content committees, will be mandated to oversee and ensure the full implementation of the local content and local participation policy,” he explained.

According to Mr Buah, an Oil and Gas Business Development and Local Content Fund would be established to support local capacity development. He further explained that the fund would be used primarily for education, training and research and development in oil and gas.

He said under the framework, sources of the fund would include contributions from licensed operators, oil and gas revenue, levies, grants and other forms of support from Ghana’s development partners. Mr Buah said the Ministry of Energy would oversee the disbursement of the fund.

Source: Daily Graphic