It appears Ghanaians will stop at nothing to criticise what they feel strongly about, but are very economical in giving praise, a necessary catalyst for motivating higher performances.
In 2010, when the country donated US$3 million to Haiti to help it deal with the ravaging impact of the 7.0-scale earthquake that struck, Ghana went berserk, with industry raising its voice why the donation was not converted to goods purchased from local, if you like, indigenous manufacturers.
In an office where the managing director introduces sweeping changes that affect appear unfavourable to staff, workers are quick to criticise. But when those bold changes lead to significant cost cuts and improvement in the long term wellbeing of staff, little or no praise goes to that leader.
Indeed, some look at praise and commendation as an attitude of encouraging mediocrity, but the place of commendation can never be over-emphasised.
According to Dale Carnegie in his best-seller How to Stop Worrying and Start Living “…talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticise not at all, nor find fault with anything…”
In that same publication, Connie Mack, a baseball coach, who had tasted more defeat than any of his peers, overcame his worry and boosted the team’s performance by using ‘praise’. He recounts: “I tried to inspire players by building them up with praise instead of tearing them down with faultfinding. I tried to have a good word for everyone.”
The State of the Nation Address has been described variedly from different quarters. But what runs through the critiques is that the address was too detailed. But truth is that is what is required of a chief executive of ‘Ghana Incorporated’ giving accounts of the status of the economy and the socio-political efforts the country is making.
The other argument was that, the address contained nothing new. Really? That is supposed to be the norm and not the exception. Once the budget has been presented to Parliament by the same President, he can only tell the members of the corporation how things have panned out. Telling us new things would mean the budget could be overrun or the new announcements will remain broken promises.
Perhaps, it with such lenses that many have glossed over certain vital issues that President John Dramani Mahama touched on which did not make it to the banner headlines.
Building a strong and resilient economy
The president in the 2014 address, pledged to transform the structure of the economy, through diversification, value addition to primary products, the promotion and the patronage of locally manufactured goods and services.
The intention is to make the country self-reliant and position it as an export-led economy to create decent jobs.
“Mr Speaker, the initiatives introduced last year have already started bearing fruit. In the area of rice cultivation, for example, local production increased by 60 per cent. According to the latest statistics from the Bank of Ghana, our rice import bill fell by a whopping 41 per cent, reducing from US$467.2 million in 2013 to US$275.1 million in 2014,” Mr Mahama said.
Walking the talk
As ECOWAS Chairman, the President paid fraternal visits to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, at the height of the Ebola crisis. Instead of donating cash, this time the country implemented the lesson from 2010 by purchasing and donating 100 tonnes of food products, sourced locally, to the three countries.
“Prominent among these products was a long-grain Made in Ghana rice brand called “Pride”– a clear evidence of the pride I felt in presenting our own homegrown variety of rice to our neighbours in their time of difficulty,” President Mahama said in the State of the Nation Address presented before Parliament on February 26.
The Pride brand of rice is produced in Aveyime in the Volta Region by Prairie Volta Limited (PVL), which also sources the produce from smallholder out-growers from the community.
Import substitution
It is to support the import substitution agenda – which many governments and economists have touted with little or no action on them – that the Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) is being constituted into a fully-fledged Ghana Export and Import (EXIM) Bank to make it the engine of developing the country’s exports.
A new sugar factory is under construction in Komenda, in the Central Region, which when completed, will help to reduce significantly the over US$300 million spend annually on sugar imports. Ghana imports, on average 375,000 tonnes of sugar annually.
In addition to the Komenda factory, the President announced that discussions had been concluded for another sugar estate and factory in the Northern Region.
It is expected that both plants should help the country to reduce the import of sugar after their completion by more than 80 per cent. The EXIM can partner these industries to increase exports and generate more foreign exchange to stabilise the local currency.
The president believes that the sugar factories will also be able to support local industries, such as beverage and ice cream manufacturers, who require large amounts of sugar for their products.
Pharmaceuticals
Government extended a GH¢51 million support to a number of local pharmaceutical companies to expand their operations, retool their factories and obtain critical certification to enable them meet international export standards.
Ernest Chemists, Tobinco Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Dannex and DanAdams were all beneficiaries, which the president said the government would continue and extended to other sectors to generate more decent work for the youth.
Again, the possibility of an EXIM linkage to facilitate exports from these companies is very high.
Water supply
The president revealed that the government spent more than US$1.1 billion on the construction of new water systems, and expansion of some existing ones across the country.
The Kpong Water Expansion and the new Teshie-Nungua desalinated water project are examples of this investment.
It is, therefore, mind-boggling why after such a massive investment in the water sector, managers of the country’s water supply will still allow the system to be bogged with illegal connections and siphoning from the mains for sale to bulk tanker operators.
The situation is rife in Teshie, especially around Tebibiano, Soldierman, Penny and Agblezaa, where tankers crawl in from distant areas to draw water at rock-bottom rates. The sellers, who have constructed underground reservoirs, use bigger diametre pipelines to siphon water from the mains, using pumping machines, and thereafter sell the stolen water to the tankers.
Ghana Water still treats them as residential and not commercial customers, hence allowing them to pay low tariffs, make supernormal profits at the expense of these huge investments the taxpayers’ money had made.
If bulk water sale is still crucial, the proper thing would be for Ghana Water to designate areas from where the tankers can draw water and pay the right tariffs to the right persons. In the case of Teshie-Nungua, these tankers should draw water only from the desalinated water plant, near Cocoa Beach.
Downsides
President Mahama mentioned the poultry industry as one of the sub-sectors receiving major government attention and benefiting from a policy to invest in strategic sectors to produce locally some of the products on which the country spends huge amounts of foreign exchange.
He mentioned the launch of a 20-million Broiler Project to reduce the importation of poultry by 40 per cent by the end of 2016 and save this economy about US$150 million. He also cited statistics that the poultry imports had dropped by 30 per cent from US$208.7 million to US$149 million.
However, contrary to claims that poultry farmers were already reaping the benefits associated with the increased demand for their products on the domestic market as a result of this policy, some poultry farmers told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS earlier this year that the financial support to the industry expected from the EDAIF had not materialised.
The Chairman of the National Association of Poultry Farmers (GNAPF), Mr Kwadwo Asante, said members were yet to receive the GH¢40 million financial support the government promised. Rather the industry was left to face the difficult 2014 all by themselves.
However, the Chief Executive Officer of EDAIF, Dr Barfour Osei, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in January that although funding for the Broiler Project was yet to be released, the poultry sector was already being supported by EDAIF.
He said farms such as Akate Farms, Asamoah & Yamoah and a host of other smallholder farmers and poultry interventions, including hatcheries and feed mills, were all being funded by EDAIF.
In spite of these, Mr Mahama further announced that an additional 200 poultry farmers would receive financial support as part of the broiler project. GB