The Vice-President, Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, has held a closed door discussion with Ms Wendy Lucas-Bull and Mr. Stephen Coller, Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Corporate and Investment Banking respectively of Barclays Bank Africa Group Ltd.
He also held discussions with Mr. John Davidson, General Counsel and Corporate Affairs Director, SABMiller PLC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Africa. SABMiller PLC, is the Parent company of Accra Brewery and Voltic (Gh) Ltd, both major players in the beverage sector in Ghana.
The Vice President, also held talks with the CEO of Africa Royal Philips, Mr. JJ Van Dongen, together with Peter Van De Ven, General Manager, Healthcare Africa.
The purpose of the meeting with the Barclays Bank Africa Group Ltd, was to brief them on government’s steps towards addressing the challenges facing the Ghanaian economy.
The measures include, the adoption of ECOWAS rules, limiting government expenditure, addressing payroll inefficiencies, building local industrial capacity, encouraging the purchases and use of made in Ghana products, expanding the revenue base and finding other innovative ways of raising funding to finance capital infrastructure.
The issues discussed ranged from energy, power generation including renewable energy and transportation. The Bank expressed its readiness to assist with building up financial markets especially helping build pension funds to scale up investments as has been done in South Africa.
The South African pension fund industry’s combined asset under management amounts to US$500 billion with ownership of approximately 40 percent of the assets on the JSE.
Legislation in 2008 opened up the Ghanaian pension funds regime to voluntary contributions and private trustee management with actual implementation starting in 2010. Ghana currently has eleven active pension funds, three of which are South African owned. Collectively they manage nearly $500m in assets.
Other issues discussed also included the petroleum deregulation with a lot of shared experience coming from the South African example where government takes itself out of pricing but allows the BDC’s hedge with the banks and allow market forces to determine pricing.
Ghana Government has began stakeholder consultations on the deregulation regime to take central government out of pricing and the central bank out of guaranteeing forex losses.
They also discussed strategies on improving on road toll collection to fund road projects across the country and addressing resource curse in the extractive industry by encouraging businesses adopt ethics that seek to take a long term view of benefit the communities in which they operate and encouraging investments in public goods such as housing, health care and education.
Mr. Stephen Coller observed there is a lot of interest from the investor market in the second buy back bond with the Central Bank and recommended moving forward that government pays particular attention to interest rates and curtailing inflation.
Ms. Wendy Lucas Bull, gave an overview of the Groups program of working closer with local boards to get more involved in the overall regional strategy and encouraging moving people around to build up the local talent and improve efficiencies across the whole organization.
Mr. Davidson briefed the Vice President on the firm’s $100 million investments in Ghana, which has seen doubling of production capacity of known brands such as Club Premium Beer, Stone Larger, Club Shandy, Castle Milk Stout etc. Accra Brewery, is the second largest brewer in the country with sales volume of some 400,000 hectolitres representing under a third of total market.
The discussions focused on ways of utilizing and scaling up the use of local raw materials such as maize, rice, sorghum and cassava in addition to other traditional raw materials in brewery. Utilizing local raw materials in the production process will not only provide a market for the raw materials but create more jobs along the value chain of the firms operations.
Mr. Davidson mentioned the company through its networks, it is looking into other ways of commercializing cassava not just to benefit Accra Brewery but to develop new markets for the product and to further stimulate demand for its production. The initiative has given small holder farmers guaranteed market for their crops. The vice president asked that they build on the stability of the business in the region, continually improve the supply chain, transfer knowledge and R&D on improving yields to farmers and other small holder corporatives.
Vice President’s meetings with Mr. JJ Van Dongen and Peter Van De Ven, General looked into ways of strengthening Ghana’s health care systems and the supply and installation of LED street lighting to reduce energy consumption.
The company shared some relevant digital innovations and connected technologies in health care aimed at accelerating government’s programmes in strengthening the country’s health care system.
Philips has been a partner supporting the Ghana Health Service for over 17 years through the provision, servicing and maintenance of state of the art equipment’s in some hospitals in Ghana. H.E the Vice President tasked them to look into engaging government through public private partnerships as a new opportunity to engaging government in the provision of healthcare systems and infrastructure.
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