Graphic pays GH¢4.7m corporate tax to government in 2012
The Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) last year paid GH¢4.7 million to the government by way of corporate taxes.
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They included Value Added Tax (VAT), Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and import duties.
The Managing Director of the GCGL, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, who stated this, added that “the board also ensured that the company met all its other financial obligations, especially VAT, import duties and loan repayment”.
He said this in his report at the 10th annual general meeting of the GCGL in Accra yesterday.
At the meeting, the company announced that it had declared a dividend of GH¢600,000 to be paid to the state. The amount represents a 20-per cent increase over the GH¢500,000 it paid to the government in 2011.
Growth
Mr Ashigbey told the meeting that the company achieved a 38.4 per cent turnover growth in the midst of competition from many partisan newspapers that challenged its market share last year.
“However, our enhanced print quality and colour capacity enabled us to organise several supplementary pages on special occasions to increase advertising revenue. In the process, we produced increased number of pages of the newspaper per edition to deliver more value for money to our readers.
“Additional income also came from newspaper printing contracts we secured to utilise excess capacity of our new printing facilities, and to understand our readers better and increase customer satisfaction, readers of all our brands were given the opportunity to send feedback during our first-ever in-paper readership survey,” he said.
G-Pak Limited
G-Pak, a subsidiary of the GCGL, according to Mr Ashigbey, registered a net profit of GH¢44,390 in 2012, compared with a net loss of GH¢184,157 in 2011.
He said with the GCGL’s installation of the quarterfold on the KBA Press that could print books at high speed coupled with quality and G-Pak’s finishing capacity, as well as the capacity of other local printers, “we would want to renew our appeal to the government, our shareholder, to increase the local content of printing jobs”.
Corporate social responsibility
On corporate social responsibility, Mr Ashigbey said the company assisted a number of people to get the needed medical care through its needy fund, while its annual free health screening programme for the Adabraka community was also carried out.
He gave an overview of the activities the company’s newspapers covered under the period.
They included the biometric voters registration exercise, display of the voters register, the death of President John Evans Atta Mills and the swearing-in of President John Mahama, the creation of new constituencies and the 2012 general election.
Scholarship
He said 13 children of members of staff of the GCGL were added onto the company’s scholarship scheme to pursue various senior high school programmes, while the company paid the school fees for continuing students.
A total of 59 students are on the scholarship scheme for the 2012-2013 academic year.
Awards
During the year under review, Mr Ashigbey said, the performance of the company was highly acknowledged through professional excellence, noting that “four of our journalists received awards for exceptional performance in various categories — Features (print), parliamentary reporting, best investigative journalism, best report on small and medium-scale enterprise”.
The Daily Graphic won the SuperBrands Excellence in Branding award.
Graphic Website, www.graphic.com.gh
He said the company’s website, www.graphic.com.gh, was relaunched on October 30, 2012 to bring about some freshness and professionalism in the ever-expanding new media.
He described the feedback as phenomenal.
“It is the fastest growing news and media website in Ghana. It had its highest hits on the 7th and 8th of December during the elections and has since maintained high ratings, with an average monthly 207,000 unique IP visits,” he said.
Outlook for the year
For 2013, the managing director promised stakeholders that the company “will pursue prudent corporate policies to further increase revenue and profit”.
Board Chair
The Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the GCGL, Dr Doris Yaa Dartey, said “the year 2012 also saw another impressive performance by the company”.
She said the board ensured the proper maintenance of good internal control procedures and systems, adherence to rules and regulations and compliance with legal requirements.
Trends in media industry
“The media landscape continued to change significantly during the year under review, making competition in the industry very keen. The year 2012 being an election year, the number of newspapers on the newsstands, as well as radio stations, increased.
“Outdoor advertising continued to grow, posing greater challenges to the other sectors of the industry,” she said.
Dr Dartey said the keen competition in the media industry required that the company adopted strategies that would respond to the peculiar needs of that market, adding that the GCGL was, accordingly, focusing on operational efficiency and new product development to maintain its lead in the media industry.
“The company did well during the period and maintained its competitiveness in the advertising market, with a 70 per cent share of the newspaper advertising market,” she said.
Outlook for 2013
For 2013, she announced, among other things, that a new design centre would be set up at the Marketing Department to assist clients with artwork and designs for their advertisements.
“We will work towards achieving our vision and living our mission. All these measures are in response to meeting the challenges ahead and growing or increasing market demands in line with our revised five-year strategic plan to become the biggest and most influential media organisation in the West African sub-region,” she said.
NMC’s commendation
The Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), Mr Kabral Blay-Amihere, commended the management, board and staff of the GCGL for the growth and impressive performance of the company last year.
By Emmanuel Bonney & Sarah Mensah/Daily Graphic/Ghana