Month: April 2022

KGL Group has presented assorted items and cash of 10,000 Ghana cedis to the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu in support of this year’s Ramadan activities and to mark his 103rd birthday.

The items include cartons of bottled water, cartons of Malta Guinness, Gallons of Cooking Oil, Bags of rice, and a Ram.

The Group led by Mr. Ken Mpare, Director of KGL Technology Ltd and Keed Ghana Ltd. and Mr. Christian Salamouni, Chief Executive Officer of Keed Ghana Limited, subsidiaries of the Group, and other management members extended heartfelt Greetings and wishes on behalf of the Executive Chairman of the KGL Group, Mr. Alex Dadey.

The delegation, in a brief address, extolled the many roles the Chief Imam continues to play in Ghana’s socio-economic initiatives and peace-building efforts.

“KGL Group has noted with great admiration the influential role your eminence continues to play in our society as a whole. We deem this occasion necessary as we strive to make significant inroads into our Muslim communities, and in fact, plan to make this gesture an annual affair by the Grace of Allah.”

Receiving the items, Sheikh Sharubutu expressed his heartfelt appreciation to Mr. Alex Dadey and the KGL Group for their visit and generosity. He offered prayers to the entire organization and thanked Mr. Dadey specifically for all he has been doing in the space over the past few years.

Source: Ghana Web

Washington DC, April 28 — The World Bank today approved $200 million to help the Government of Ghana increase access to broadband, enhance the efficiency and quality of selected digital public services, and strengthen the digital innovation ecosystem in Ghana to help create better jobs and economic opportunities.

Digital is one of Ghana’s best-performing sectors and grew on average by 19 percent per year between 2014 and 2020. Today, Ghana is among the digital leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Digital Economy diagnostic conducted in 2020 identified key bottlenecks that needs to be removed to further accelerate Ghana’s digital transformation. Building on previous investments, particularly through the ongoing World Bank-supported e-Transform Ghana project, this newly approved Ghana Digital Acceleration Project is supporting a regulatory shift to create an enabling environment for digital inclusion and innovation; streamline governance and delivery of public services; and facilitate smallholder engagement in data-driven digital agriculture.

“Expanding digital access and adoption, enhancing digital public service delivery, and promoting digitally enabled innovation are essential for Ghana’s digital transformation, which will help drive a robust post-COVID-19 recovery,” said Pierre Laporte, World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. “The Ghana Digital Acceleration Project covers all these elements and will help advance the whole-of-government digital transformation agenda to accelerate adoption of digital technologies and innovation by key productive sectors, such as agriculture, to foster an economy-wide digital transformation.”

The project will help strengthen the local digital entrepreneurship ecosystem and improve the survival and growth rate of digital technology-enabled startups. This goal will be achieved through supporting more effective innovation ecosystem coordination, better service provision by Entrepreneur Support Organizations, expansion of access to early-stage financing, and promotion of advanced digital innovation skills.

The Ghana Digital Acceleration Project is expected to increase access to mobile internet and broadband services of 6 million people by encouraging private sector investment in last-mile connectivity in underserved rural areas. It will also promote digital inclusion for women, persons with disabilities and rural communities through regulatory updates and investments among others. This will help to remove barriers to broadband and digital service access for Ghana’s lowest-income people and to close the regional digital gap.

“Public sector digitization under this operation will continue the e-Transform project’s digital public service delivery ongoing efforts, to help generate significant economic and development benefits for people, businesses and the government, such as increased efficiency gains and time savings for the society and the economy,” said Maria Claudia Pachon, Senior Digital Development Specialist of the World Bank and Task Leader of the project. “The digitization of government services will also result in significant cost savings due to decreased travel and processing time to obtain services, as well as transaction costs such as manual entry errors, fraud, and corruption.”

Source: Modern Ghana

Great Olympics head coach, Annor Walker says he is surprised with the actions and attitude of the supporters of the club.

The two-time Ghana Premier League champion currently sit seventh on the league log with thirty-nine points after twenty-six games.

Following the defeat to Ashgold last weekend, the fans of the club called for the dismissal of the former Berekum Chelsea and Nania FC gaffer.

However, Walker insists that he has done a good job at Great Olympics even if they sack him.

“If this is how they will pay me back, it’s okay. I have done a lot of good works for the club and at a point in time we were title contenders”, he said on Accra-based Hot FM.

“If Olympics feels I’m not good for the club again, they can sack me but surely, I will not go hungry. God will take care of me,” he added.

Source: Modern Ghana

The Managing Director of GCB Bank PLC, Mr Kofi Adomakoh, has explained that the Bank’s stellar performance in the year 2021 is testament that the Bank’s ambitious strategy aimed at dominating the market is on course.

GCB Bank posted impressive financial results with profit before income tax increasing by 34 per cent in 2021. Growing from GH¢ 602 million in 2020 to GH¢810 million last year. GCB Bank also increased its total asset from GH¢15.5 billion in 2020 to GH¢18.3 billion in 2021, representing a growth of 18 per cent.

In his opening remarks at the Facts Behind the Figures programme organized by the Ghana Stock Exchange, Mr. Adomakoh stated that the Bank’s strategic ambition is to be the dominant player in the market and the best by every measure anchored around three strategic pillars of revenue growth and profitability, operational excellence, people and talents.

Mr Adomakoh explained that the advent of Covid-19 highlighted the need for the Bank to accelerate the execution of its strategies and plans. “Prior to the advent of Covid, the banking businesses had been disrupted by technology, but Covid also shocked the bank into accelerating the execution of its strategies and plans”. He stated.

“GCB Bank is currently the largest retail bank with a strong asset base, but despite the bank’s stronghold in the retail market, a key part of our strategy is to expand our market share within the retail market space. The bank has therefore revamped its technology, improved its human resources, and strengthened organizational rigour.” He added.

Mr Adomakoh also explained that the Bank is also seeking to improve its performance in the wholesale and corporate banking segment by deepening the bank’s share of wallet.

On people and talents, Mr. Adomakoh explained that the bank has restructured, improved its human resources, and also brought in critical human resources to execute key elements of its strategy.

“The banking landscape has evolved and GCB’S grand agenda is to deliver strong value to its shareholders through excellence in every facet of the Bank’s operations.” He stated.

Speaking at the event, Mr Socrates Afram, Deputy Managing Director of Finance, GCB Bank explained that an integral part of the bank’s performance was driven by real growth in the bank’s deposit base.

“The profit performance was achieved on the back of strong balance sheet growth underpinned by customer deposits growth. Deposits growth funded increased investments in earning assets like Investment securities, loans and advances and interbank placements which generated the required interest income to boost revenue.” He stated.

“Aggressive recovery efforts also helped in releasing suspended interest into income from recoveries made on non-performing accounts” he explained.

Mr Afram added that one of the cardinal approaches to GCB Bank’s strategy was to “digifirst” and as such a business optimization unit was set up to identify redundancies and identify all processes that can be digitalized to make the bank nimbler and more responsive.

Explaining other factors that accounted for the bank’s performance, Mr Afram explained that the bank conducted detailed segmentation to re-align products and services to meet customer needs, expansion of the loan book and the development of robust digital platforms to deliver superior value.

“The bank also strengthened internal controls, established a first-class security operations center, upgraded its core banking system from version 12.02 to 14.3, embarked on process automation to drive efficiency, and also attained PCI DSS certification to ensure high level card data security,” he added.

Mr. Afram added that going forward, the bank will strengthen the credit underwriting processes and vigorously monitor and pursue customers for credit facilities granted to ensure they perform under the credit terms to significantly reduce impairment and Non-Performing Loans (NPLs).

The Deputy MD, Operations, Mr Emmanuel Lamptey, announced that GCB has enhanced anti-money laundering and credit risk tools.

The Managing Director of the Exchange, Mr Mr. Ekow Afedzie, described GCB as of the most liquid stock of the GSE.

He said GCB Bank since listing on the Exchange in 1996 has contributed immensely to the development and growth of the Exchange.

Present at the programme included the Executive Director, Wholesale and Investment Banking, Mr Samuel Kwame Aidoo, Executive Head, Retail Banking, Mr John Adamah, Chief Digital and Marketing, Mr Eric Coffie and others.

Source: Ghana Web

Accra, April 29, GNA – Players in the building and construction sector have called on the Government to facilitate the establishment of assembling plants for the production of materials needed in the housing industry.

They said such a move, as being done in the automobile sector, would help reduce the cost of materials and consequently, the cost of housing in the country.

Mr Ebenezer Kwadwo Saka Addo-Mensah, Managing Director of Saka Homes, a Real Estate and Land Development firm made this recommendation to the government.

He was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview on the sidelines of a breakfast meeting with industry playrs in Accra on Thursday.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) investor map meeting was on the theme: “Identifying opportunities and enhancing local participation in housing and infrastructure sectors.”

It was organised by Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Mr Addo-Mensah said that creating an enabling environment for companies with the capacity to establish plants in the country would: “Go a long way to help with the cost.”

He explained that: “For instance, the cost of tiles being produced at Takoradi at the moment is way lower than the tiles that we import, and that’s where my company buys from.”

The Real Estate Developer added that: “We can replicate same with other building materials like ceramics, louvers and ceilings.”

” When we produce these locally, it also create jobs for us. So it is something that we should consciously look at.”

He noted that there were opportunities for the Government to reduce the housing gap of about 85,000 housing units yearly, and the overall two million housing unit needs before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Addo-Mensah said: “GIPC is in the position to attract such investments into Ghana. The government just has to provide incentives that will make these companies come here, including tax waivers, maybe free lands.”

Ghana requires a total of USD 9.3 billion, annually, to bridge its infrastructure gap, 20 per cent of such amount (USD1.86 billion) is required in the housing sector.

Mr Yofi Grant, Chief Executive Officer of GIPC, said that such financing gap required significant investment in the housing and infrastructure sector.

He indicated that the Centre was facilitating investment into the housing sector by speaking with private sector players and partnering with UNDP through the investor map, to outline critical areas that they could contribute for economic growth.

He said that the government was using the One District-One Factory (1D1F) initiative to entice private companies, including indigenous ones, to produce some of the materials needed in the housing sector.

Mr Grant noted that: “The government was providing locational incentives, duty free on plant, equipment and machinery to manufacture for local consumption and export.”

About 60 per cent of the working population in Ghana needs help to access housing and about 35 per cent not able to access housing even with government support through subsidies.

That, Mr Sukhrob Khoshmukhamedov, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative, said presented opportunities for the private sector to partner with the government in its quest to close the infrastructure gap.

He noted that numerous studies, including ones conducted by UNDP had proven that infrastructure growth and services could play a critical role in economic growth and poverty reduction.

He added that: “It also enhances human security, particularly of poor people, by contributing to their security in food, employment, health, communities, personal and environmental security.” 

Source: Ghana News Agency

Accra, April 29, GNA – Some muslim students of the St John’s Grammar Senior High School near Dome, Accra were captured as they performed ablution during a break.

Ablution is a ritual washing that is considered a compulsory activities to ensure cleanliness before a Muslim performs prayer.

Jumma Mubarak literally means Happy Friday, where Jumma means “Friday” and Mubarak translates as “blessed”.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Nigerian Afrobeats Wizkid has bagged a sum of one million dollars to perform at the upcoming ‘Rolling Loud Concert’ in Toronto.

According to the organizers of the event, the ‘Ojuolegba’ singer has been billed alongside three other artists to headline the event in Canada.

The other artists include Dave, and the American rap sensation, Future.

The event will take place in Ontario, at a 15,000-person capacity auditorium for three days.

Reacting to the announcement, Wizkid disclosed on social media that he had been paid a million dollars to perform as a headliner.

Wizkid will mount the stage on the third day of the event which takes off on September 11, 2022.

Acknowledging the invitation on his Twitter page, rapper Future confirmed that has been paid a million dollars to perform at the event as a headliner.

“How many trap niggas u know can get 1mil ah show??? #IMDATNIGGA,” his post read.

Source: Modern Ghana

Mr Robert Wugah, Managing Director of Imperial General Assurance, has commended Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, the National Chief Imam, for serving as a symbol of religious tolerance for the peace and unity of the country.

He said the Chief Imam’s love and support for people from different religious backgrounds and all walks of life were worthy of emulation.

Mr Wugah made the comments during a courtesy call to the National Chief Imam.

As part of the visit, he presented a cash donation, bags of rice, gallons of cooking oil and other foodstuffs on behalf of the Board, Management and Staff of the Company to the office of the Chief Imam.

Mr Ivan Avereriyeh, Board Chairman of Imperial General Assurance congratulated the Chief Imam on his 103rd birthday celebration and asked for his prayers for the Company.

He appealed to the Muslim youth to be cautious in their celebration during Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, to avoid road crashes.

Sheikh Sharubutu thanked the Company for the gesture and underscored the importance of giving, particularly during Ramadan, to invoke the blessings of Allah.

He called on Ghanaians to protect the peace of the country by living in peace and harmony with one another.

Other members of the Imperial delegation were Hajia Hamida Nuhu, Board Secretary; Mr Kofi Kyereh-Darkwah, a Consultant; Mrs Josephine Asumbire, Chief Operations Officer; and Eric Paakow Selby, Head of Corporate Affairs.

Imperial General Assurance is a fully re-capitalised non-life company in line with the new minimum capital requirement by the National Insurance Commission of Ghana.

Source: Ghana News Agency