Metro Mass increase its routes

The Metro Mass Transit (MMT), a public passenger transport company, is to add 15 more routes to its present routes nation-wide, before the end of the year.
The move which will bring to 265, the total number of routes, forms part of the company's wider corporate objective of opening up its routes in all the 170 district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies throughout the country by 2014.

One of the MMT's buses

The Head of Communications at the MMT, Mr Eric Boadi-Misa, told the Daily Graphic in an interview that the MMT's resolve to expand its route networks in the nation was meant to "provide affordable transportation throughout the country."
The company last week inaugurated two new routes at Mehame, a cocoa and food production town in the Asutifi South District of the Brong Ahafo and Enchi in the Western region.
Mr Boadi-Misa added that the opening up of more routes and the distribution of the company's passenger buses was done "according to the profitability of the area."
The transport fares of the company's passenger buses have not increased despite the 30 per cent increase in the ex-pump price of petroleum products which consequently saw fuel prices and transport fares going up.
Mr Boadi-Misa said the non-increment had caused the patronage of "our service to shoot up by 17 per cent."
According to him, the company was "capitalising" on some of the routes that its private competitors thought to be unprofitable to make up its loses.
He said "the MMT had now weaned itself of government subventions and we are at the moment operating without government support."
As part of reducing the company's accident levels, Mr Boadi-Misa said the MMT had trained 24 female drivers to add to the present team of competent drivers.
He said; “Females, as you may know, have the temperament to go through the shocks of the job unlike their male colleagues who are 'hot' especially when on the road."

Economy registers 7.7 percent growth

THE country's economy saw a 7.7 per cent growth rate last year, indicating a 3.7 per cent leap from the 2009 growth rate of four per cent.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which calculates the total value of goods and services produced in the country during 2010, also amounted to GH¢46 million, representing a GH¢9,725 million surge from the 2009 GDP figure.

Dr Kwabena Duffuor is Ghana's Finance Minister

Launching the maiden edition of the quarterly release of the country's GDP estimates in Accra, the Government Statistician, Dr Grace Bediako, said, "The economy was robust throughout the year, with stronger growth witnessed in the last two months of 2010.”
On a quarterly basis, she said the last seasonal quarter of 2010 saw the economy growing by 9.6 per cent, as compared to the 6.2 per cent rate recorded for the same period in 2009.
With regard to the contributions of the various sectors to the economy, she said the services sector continued its dominance, recording 9.8 per cent, followed by industry and agriculture, which recorded 5.6 and 5.3 per cent, respectively.
According to Dr Bediako, the Ghana Statistics Service (GSS) had resolved to release GDP figures on a quarterly basis, instead of the yearly releases, and hoped that the quarterly release "will help in policy decision making by the government and also guide the business community".
 "Many economic experts attribute the economic downturn that engulfed the world in 2008 to the year-long release of GDP figures that do not give early warnings about the economy to the government and policy makers," she noted.
She observed that the quarterly release of the GDP would help give early snapshots about what was  happening to the economy to policy makers and the government.
On inflation for April, Dr Bediako said the rate inched down to 9.02 per cent from its March rate of 9.13 per cent, partly causing the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Ghana to cut its policy rate by 5o basi points, from 13.5 to 15 poits.

Grace Bediako is the Government's Statiscian

The drop, the second in a two-month row after a January increment in prices of fuel prices pulled the rate up has also raised expectation among policy makers and managers of the economy that the downward inflationary trend might be resuming.
The April rate indicated a  0.11 per cent annual dip from the previous month’s figure.
The Government Statistician, at a news conference to announce the rate, said the downward trend in inflation for the period of March and April 2011 could “be attributed to the food and non-alcoholic beverages group”.
“While the food and non-alcoholic group had a 0.52 per cent point decline, the non-food group recorded a 0.16 per cent increase,” she said.
Dr Bediako attributed the 0.52 per cent decline in the food and non-alcoholic beverages to “the present stable exchange rate and the bumper harvest experienced last year”.
According to her, the 30 per cent increase in the ex-pump prices of petroleum products was still having ripples on the transport sector, causing it to record a monthly rate of 21.72 per cent, the highest in the non-food group.
Communications, however, recorded no change in its inflation rate for the period.

Arthur Amissah heads the MPC of the BoG

Non-alcoholic beverages recorded 1.52 per cent, the highest in the sub-group, while bread and cereals, two key consumables nation-wide, also recorded negative inflation rates of -1.55 per cent, being the lowest in the sub-group.
On the regional inflationary outlook, the Greater Accra Region recorded the highest rate of 12.31 per cent, while the Volta Region’s 5.24 per cent was the least.
Strangely, however, the Upper East and Upper West regions, both farming regions, recorded the highest inflation rates in the food group.
The rate of inflation, which measures the average price change of goods and services in the country, had, until last January, recorded continuous declines from 20.74 per cent in June 2009 to 8.58 per cent in December last year.
The trend, however, changed as the rate inched up by 0.5 and 0.08 per cent in January and February, respectively.
With the present consistent two-month decline in the rate, many are anxious to see if the trend will run deep into the year.
 The Vice-President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Dr George Dawson-Ahmoah, who chaired the event, said the quarterly figures would help "businesses like us in the AGI to get essential information on the economy at the shorter frequency".
That, he added, was necessary to help the business community plan and forecast investment plans properly.
He called on the GSS to endeavour to sustain the initiative, since it was relevant to industry and policy makers nation-wide.

HFC to buy back shares; To enhance share price appreciation

HFC Bank (Ghana) Limited has secured its shareholders’ approval that would enable it to make a five per cent maximum buy back share purchase of the bank.
The  move, the bank said, was expected to help push its share price to an “appreciable level.”
The share price of the bank on the stock market has over the years remained low despite the bank’s impressive performance, a situation the managing director of the Ghana Stock Exchange last attributed to “too much institutional shareholding of the company’s shares.”
At an Annual General Meeting held in Accra, the shareholders passed a special resolution that gave the bank the authority “to make market purchases of the company’s ordinary shares up to a maximum of five per cent of its issued share capital and to operate a share capital deals accounts for that purpose.”
The shareholders also passed another resolution that allows the bank to convert the equivalent of US$2million invested by the Aureos Africa Fund as convertible bonds in the bank to ordinary shares without “first offering them to all existing shareholders.”
Managing Director of the HFC Bank, Mr Asare Akuffo, would, however, not comment on the expected impact of those two resolutions on the bank’s performance in the coming years except to say “buy back is not something new in the bank.”
The Chairman of the bank’s Board of Directors, Nana Agyei Duku, said the bank’s profit after tax in 2010 was GH¢8.6 million, a 49.7 per cent leap from its 2009 figure.
According to him, the bank’s continuous expansions in its branch networks had “resulted in an increase in customer deposits by 27 per cent to GH¢156.5million last year.”
The Chairman said the board had thus recommended a dividend of GH¢0.016 per share, a difference of GH¢0.001 from the previous two year’s dividend figure of GH¢0.015.
But some shareholders at the AGM said the recommended dividend was “woefully inadequate” taking into consideration the “impressive performance of the bank within the year.”
“The dividend, I think is on the downside; it is woefully inadequate. The increase from the previous year’s dividend is just GH¢0.001 which is nothing to write home about,” Mr Smauel Akwasi Adiku, a shareholder of the bank said at the AGM.
According to him, “the bank wanted to keep the rest of the money so that it can use it to buy back the extra shares. But I think there’s an alternative solution; pay us high dividend so that the share price would rather rise,” Mr Adiku further advised.
The Managing Director, Mr Asare Akuffo, however, disagreed that the recommended dividend was on the low side and said that “it is the question of how many shares you have. If compared to our peers in the industry, our is even on the higher side.”
He thus called on the shareholders to “invest more in the bank so that you can get more dividends because some shareholders would be taking away as high as GH¢5,000 and GH¢110,000 just because they have invested heavily in the bank.”
On the bank’s outlook for 2011, Mr Akuffo said the bank would be focusing much of its attention on “growing its mortgage portfolio”.
He said the expected increase in the supply of the middle income residential properties should have a major boost to our home loan business and “HFC Realty Limited, a subsidiary of the bank would be a major contributor to the supply of new homes on the market.”
According to the MD, although margins are expected to be lower in 2011 due to competitive pressures and the general reductions in interest rates and growth in assets of the bank “expansions in the other business areas and cost control should compensate for the downward pressure on the earnings.”

SSNIT Informal sector fund to rely on ICT

THE Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Informal Sector Fund (SISF) is hoping to take advantage of the high mobile phone penetration and the rising Internet usage in the country to enrol more members onto the fund.
The Managing Director of the fund, Dr Francis Sapara-Grant, said people interested in signing on to the SISF would be given the opportunity to register and pay their contributions into their respective accounts through mobile phones and other Internet powered applications.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic on the state of the fund, the MD added that the fund’s website currently made it possible for members to log on and view their account statements.
“We are also striving to expand our operations to cover the remaining three regions that are not covered yet to give the fund a real national character and make this flexible fund available to all Ghanaians,” Dr Sapara-Grant added.
The fund, which started operations as an independent body in 2008 to address the low patronage by informal sector workers to SSNIT contributions, now has a membership of about 85,000, which the managing director said was still growing by the day.
He said by their estimate, the current SISF membership was “just a tip of the iceberg considering the informal nature of the country’s workforce”.
The sector is estimated to account for over 80 per cent of the country’s working population.
As a result, Dr Sapara-Grant said although the fund had appointed marketing field officers to go round and register members as well as collect their contributions, his outfit was “devising more cost effective methods that can be used to get more people registered.”
And though the fund’s primary target is the informal sector worker, the managing director said, “It has room for formal sector workers and Ghanaians in the Diaspora.”
“Members are registered such that their withdrawals can be paid to them within 48 hours. A member can, however, have access to his or her contributions after five months of contributions,” Dr Sapara-Grant explained.
The passage of the National Pensions Act, 2008 (Act 766) which created the three tier pension scheme has brought in private participation in the sector, thereby opening up the SISF to competition from prospective pension fund managers.
He stated that the opening up of the sector to private participation would help challenge SISF “to be more creative to help sustain the interest in the field.”