A dream delayed, not abandoned • The case of Ela Manufacturing Company

If dreams and expectations were time-bound, then those of  the proprietor of Ela Liquid Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company would have been shelved. Maxwell Adombila Akalaare chronicles the business path of Mrs Elizabeth Enyonam Agbeli, the woman behind the enterprise

Twenty years ago, lack of finance and a difficult operating environment nearly stalled the birth of what is now Mrs Agbel's Ela Liquide Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company.
Mrs Agbeli’s dream of becoming an entrepreneur blossomed after she survived an accident that prevented her from continuing her business as an inter-city foodstuffs retailer. Incidentally, it was this same incident that was to spur her on to firm up her decision to become an entrepreneur.
She said a near fatal accident during one of her journeys to buy foodstuffs for retail scared her away from that business, forcing her to rigorously explore other ways of realising her entreprenuership dreams.

Mrs Agbeli admires her Ela liquid soap

The middle-aged Mrs Agbeli told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that way back in 1991, her passion to become an entrepreneur compelled her to participate in an entreprenuership programme organised by the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) in Sunyani.
“At that entreprenuership course, the NBSSI facilitators taught us how to set up a business, manage it, as well as other basic accounting and marketing principles to be applied in the business,” she said.
However,  she had barely started the business when she realised that lack of capital was another hurdle she had to confront.
“I did not have enough money to start my own business,” she recalled, adding that the perceptions of her  banker-husband did not equally help matters.
“He would always tell me to look at those big factories and ask, where are they? They are all gone and you, a woman, want to go into business. Go, if you have the money.”
 Mrs Agbeli, however, persevered in her quest to ran a successful enterprise, although with a partly dampened spirit to contend with, since she was an inter-city foodstuffs retailer.
In that foodstuffs business too, Mrs Agbeli said the issue of limited finance kept rearing its ugly head up, prompting her to intermittently seek for finance from the country’s sometimes unyielding financial institutions.

A near accident and the scare
Mrs Agbeli, who now rans the Ela Liquid Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company, said after that gruelling accident, she quickly took advantage of an opportunity afforded by the Training Teachers Association in 2003 to study liquid soap production. But again, she said, the same lack of finance withered the fruits that would have come from that study, at least after the few years thereafter.
“After I had learnt liquid soap production, how to get the materials to start the business was just a problem. I could not get money again to buy the needed equipment,” she recollected rather sadly.
But that, according to Mrs Agebli, was again not enough to deter her desire of becoming an astute business owner.

The relief and now the odds

Having braced the odds for all these years and not abandoning the dream, Mrs Agbeli said she managed to mobilise some capital and started the Ela Liquid Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company at Ofankor Barrier in 2009.
Nearly two years into the entreprenuership, however, Mrs Agbeli said her frustration were even mountainous but not enough to discourage her from the trade she had spent almost a decade to develop.
“I currently produce 200 bottles liquid soap and 100 bottles of yoghurt per week. Market for the products is now my problem. There’s no one to buy them and the few who do, do    it on credit," she told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS.

“See, even the food vendors, whenever they go to the market to buy the liquid soap, they pay cash for it but when I send mine to them, they collect on credit yet if I go to collect my money, then they start counting their figures and later it becomes a quarrel," she lamented.
Currently, the factory is producing below capacity because of the lack of market and now she only relies on sales across churches and other social events to sell her products.
The perishable nature of Mrs Agebli’s products, especially the yoghurt, does not equally help matters since most people, according to her, find it difficult paying for the credited yoghurt after they have consumed it.

Unreliable power and AMA blues
Not all are impressed by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) mayor, Mr Alfred Vanderpuye’s supposed ambitious plans of ridding the streets of hawkers and subsequently turning Ghana’s disorganised capital into a Millennium City.
Mrs Agebli is one of such people. Far away near the Ofankor Barrier, along the Nsawam road, she said the AMA’s ban on street hawking was further disturbing her already lean market for Ela Yoghurt.
“I used to give some of the yoghurt to the junior high school students to sell, especially when they were on holidays. But now, the AMA task force always drives them away from the streets,” she stressed.
The country’s unreliable electricity supply has equally impacted negatively on the business. According to her, most of the provisions shops that used to purchase her yoghurt are now scared to do so “because of the on-and-off power situation. They always say if they collect them, they may go bad. So, they too have stopped collecting the products.”
 So how is Mrs Agebli surviving in the midst of the odds?
“I have always believed that I will go far and Ela would be larger. I keep praying and working hard for God to make a way for me,” she said.
Mrs Agbeli explained that she sometimes had to rely on her initial profession as a seamstress to brace the odds of the manufacturing sector and that she was currently considering adding fruit juice production to the line of products. GB

Elizabeth is on 0245104309

In our next issue, we will feature Ms Fanny Aggrey-Fynn Amissah, the lady who runs Me ‘n’ Eu Collections, a beads and hats company at Tema  Community Seven and also doubles as an actress.

GSS holds session for financial journalists

THE Ghana Statistical Service  (GSS) will from today start a literacy workshop for media practitioners at Dodowa, Accra.
The two-day workshop, according to the GSS is meant “to enlighten media practitioners on the compilation procedures used in the national accounts, the consumer and producer inflation.”
In a letter distributed to selected media houses in Accra, the service said the practitioners would be trained in analyses and interpretation of economic statistics compiled and disseminated by the GSS.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will sponsor one person from each selected media house “but media houses can increase their number of nominees at their own additional cost.”

Securities market experiences first awards nigh

PLAYERS of the nation's securities market, regulated by the Security and Exchange Commission over the weekend experienced their first awards night, virtually 20 years after the Ghanaian capital market took shape.
The Ghana Investment Awards (GIA), organised by the Premier Networking Investment Club (PNIC), was among other things to recognise the dedicated performance of individuals and institutions towards the nation's country's capital market, and in so doing encourage  competition to breed excellence in the industry.
In all, 13 institutions and three individuals were awarded for their respective hardwork in their areas of operations.
President of the PNIC, Mr Kwame D Ampofo, noted that the awards were meant "to educate the investor public about the products and services available to them, while helping create awareness of the market."
He said this year's awards night, having been the maiden edition "has been without challenges. We, however, been overwhelmed at the support we have received from all stakeholders" adding that the GIA team had successfully gone through them to have the event.
He said the team was hoping to "continually" improve on the procedures with "increased rigour in order to reward only deserving winners."
The minister of finance and economic planning, who was the guest of honour noted that a well developed securities market in the country would "help mobilise private funds and channel such funds to the most productive sectors of the economy.
"Government, is therefore committed to the development of this market," the Chief Director of the ministry, Mr Nicholas Jamil, who represented the finance and economic planning minister said.
The deputy Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange, Mr Ekow Afedzi, observed that the award scheme "was a good initiative. There has never been an initiative like this to recognise the hard work and commitment of people and institutions to the development of the securities market since it started shaping about 20 years ago."
He was also of the view that the award scheme would help spur up competition in the sector and thus hoped that the market would in the coming years witness excellent operations.
The Ghana Commercial Bank won the Best Performing Stock for the year 2010.
Other industry players such as CAL Brokers, CAL Asset Management, Databank Group, IC Securities, Merban Investment Holdings, Strategic African Securities, HFC Investments Services, SDC, HFC Brokerage, Ecobank Development Corporation (EDC), SIC Financial Services Ltd., Merban Investment Holdings and Ecobank Investment Managers also received awards ranging from gold to silver.      

Companies raise red flags - Over environmental tax

The 20 per cent tax imposed on plastic materials, otherwise known as Environmental Tax has taken effect but not without some uneasiness from major plastic consuming and producing companies in the country. Maxwell Adombila Akalaare reports.

KEY plastic consuming and producing companies in the country are protesting the 20 per cent tax imposed on plastic materials.
The 2011 Budget and Economic Policy Statement of the government through which the tax was introduced  stated that the tax was meant "to protect the environment” and would be collected at “importation and any production or collection points" throughout the country.
But the plastic manufacturing companies disagree, they are  questioning the rational for railroading the 20 per cent charge on plastic material into the national tax policy.
In separate interviews with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS, sources within the Association of Ghana Industry (AGI) and other major plastic consuming and producing companies in the country have, however, challenged such an intend describing it as "misplaced" and “not meeting the tax' target.”
The Managing Director of Unilever Ghana, which now hosts the head office of Unilever's West African operations, excluding Nigeria, Mr David Mureithi told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that the tax was "purely a revenue collection measure" rather than an environment one as had been indicated in the budget.

David Mureithi doubts if the Environmental Tax is a 'sin' tax

"Or is the government saying this environmental tax is a 'sin tax’, the MD asked. 
A sin tax is a form of punitive tax placed on products that are deemed unwanted by "society" and thereby aimed at discouraging or reducing consumption of the product.  
 He further wondered if funds to be generated through the tax would “go to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning or the Environmental Protection Agency for environmental purposes.”
The Managing Director was of the view that government should engage industry  on  how best to handle plastic waste and  “set up small enterprises that would be responsible for the recycling of these wastes”. He said that a legislative measure from local government authorities such as the assemblies on how to dispose plastic waste was more welcoming than the tax.
 “In the midst of this escalating global commodity prices, you can count on industry to pass on the effects of these price hikes and that of the 20 per cent tax onto the final products and the hardships that it would bring to them is not what industry wants”, he stated
A source within the AGI also told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that the association was wondering why government is yet to make use of a committee's proposals on adding addictive -  Oxo-Bio Degradable Additives to raw materials used in manufacturing plastic bags that would cause them to desolve within 90 days once they were exposed to sun rays and the air after usage.
"This committee, made up of officials from the Ghana Standards Board, Plastic Manufacturers Association, the AGI and government officials contracted a UK-based bio lab company to carry out a research into the best ways of managing these materials. The committee submitted its report to the Ministry of Trade and Industry on July, 2009.
"We also advised government on a lot of measures to adopt towards solving this problem. See, we told   government  to pass a Legislative Instrument that would compel all plastic manufacturers and importers to make all their products bio-degradable. Once that is done, it compels all of them to meet this standard;  import or produce plastic materials that are only bio-degradable. We further stated that they should encourage establishment of  recycling plants by giving out incentives to entreprenuers to engage in recycling."
"So how come all these opportunities are there, they are not exploited yet all that government could do was to impose a 20 per cent tax on plastic materials?" the source asked.
 The Association of Ghana Industry, Ghana Plastic Manufacturers Association (GPMA),  the umbrella body of plastic manufacturing companies in the country, the Private Enterprise Foundation and some other business groupings in the country have, following the introduction of the tax late last November been spearheading negotiations with government on possibilities of  withdrawing the tax or reducing the rate.
The source however lauded government on its transparency and willingness towards the negotiations adding that those negotiations have led to government agreeing to limit the tax "to only soft plastic materials; polythene bags and the likes that mostly litter while excluding the hard ones that barely litter.  But this boils down to the same point; that the tax is not serving its purpose but rather a money making venture.”
Many companies at the receiving end of the tax are asking “if the tax is really meant to protect the environment as the government wants us to believe, then why exempt sachet water producers who are the worst pollutees of the environment with their products?”
Prices of plastic related wares in the country have already started pulling gone up. Several companies have have posted on their  entrances  telling their  prospective customers that “in view of the 20 per cent Environmental Tax being introduced, there would be price increases very shortly on all containers.”
Checks by the GRAPHIC BUSINESS within some key plastic consuming and producing companies in Accra indicated that most of these companies had restructured their internal expenses to capture the tax as tax agents at the ports last February started to  implement the 20 per cent at the importation of plastic products.
The National Security Advisor, Brigadier-General Nunoo Mensah ealry last week hinted to Citi FM, a private radio station in Accra that government was considering a ban on plastic water because of the waste it generates.
Plastic waste materials, mostly those from pure water sachets and polythene bags are currently competing for space in open gutters and virtually every available space nation-wide.
The plastic menace currently engulfing the country dates back to decades. As a result, the  problem has received various high profile institutional and individual attentions including committees, funds as well as parliamentary and Cabinet level attentions. These efforts by various political administrations are  yet to yield the desired results.
Time would, however tell if the latest move, a 20 per cent tax on plastic materials aimed at “protecting the environment” would remedy the country’s plastic waste mess.