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Absa Bank touts contribution to economic growth
Abena Osei Poku (middle), MD, Absa Bank Ghana, interacting with Ato Afful (right), Managing Director, GCGL after the meeting. Looking on is Ebenezer Amankwah (left), Head of Corporate Communications, Absa Bank Ghana. Picture:EDNA SALVO-KOTEY

Absa Bank touts contribution to economic growth

Absa Bank Ghana said its operations are solidly anchored in the Ghanaian economy, playing an enabling role in key sectors of the economy.

These include sectors such as oil and gas, health, infrastructure, telecoms, agriculture, manufacturing, energy and education.

The Managing Director of the bank, Abena Osei-Poku, said this when she paid a courtesy call on her counterpart at the Graphic Communications Group Limited, Ato Afful on April 7.

She described her outfit as a systemically important bank that has supported economic growth in the country for more than 100 years.

With regards to the Small, Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs), Ms Osei-Poku said, “We continuously support the SME sector like no other bank does in Ghana.

Over the years, our support has been recognised on so many platforms,” she added.

The Absa Ghana MD also noted that the bank also helps the economy, households, individuals and large corporates as well.

“We do a lot when it comes to employment and, for example, we are now the number one top employer in the banking sector as highlighted by the global Top Employer Awards.

Media relationship

Ms Osei-Poku said the bank considered regular engagements with its key stakeholders a strategic part of how it operates as a business adding, “We cannot tell our own stories and that’s why a partnership with the GCGL is important because it is a significant partner to our external relations.

“The media landscape is undoubtedly one of the most vibrant and progressive sectors in the country and we see your establishment as setting the pace in professionalism, accuracy, accountability and forthrightness,” she said.

Commitment to truth, accuracy

Mr Afful pledged the company’s commitment to truth and accuracy every day.

He said the company would continue to use its brands, the Daily Graphic, the flagship; the Graphic Business, the company’s financial newspaper and one of the leaders on the market,The Mirror, the Junior Graphic, the Graphic Sports,the Graphic Showbiz and the Graphic online to tell the facts, adding that truth would continue to guide the company’s publications.

On the digitalisation of its publications from the country’s pre-independence to the present, Mr Afful explained that the GCGL hosted the single biggest archive of content in both print form and photo imagery, and that if such content were to get lost, it meant the history of the country had literally been lost.

“This is a national asset that even the national archives will not be able to give you. When we go and pick what others have written about our country, we will be retelling what others saw. But this is our story, told by us, witnessed by us and this is Africa. If we are able to save this thing for prosperity, it will be amazing,” he pointed out.

Collaborations

The Director, Sales and Marketing of the GCGL, Franklin Sowa, said the company had a lot of initiatives on which Absa could collaborate, adding that the bank could, as part of loyalty packages to clients, grant them subscription to the Graphic NewsPlus app to receive daily news updates.

Other areas where the bank could collaborate with the company included the Tertiary Business Sense Challenge, a contest among the various business schools in the tertiary institutions in the country; the Mirror Model Woman project and buying copies of the Junior Graphic to give to less-endowed schools.

Reporting the micro

The Editor of the Daily Graphic, Kobby Asmah, said business stories were too elitist, focusing largely on macro-economic policies, as against micro-economic policies.

He urged the bank to help the newspaper tell the business story around the micro sector, focusing largely on SMEs.

Mr Asmah also entreated the bank to make its resource persons available to enable them to share knowledge with reporters of the company and through that, both organisations could effectively communicate.

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