Category: General

The Minority in Ghana’s Parliament has given strong indications even before the 2022 government budget statement and economic policy debate on the floor of the House that, they are unable to support government with the introduction of the E-Levy.

According to the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu they are unable to build a national consensus on the E-Levy as Vice President Dr. Bawumi questioned, “why tax poor people for MoMo as the banks are taxed”.

“We do not have difficulty serving you notice that we would not be convinced on the justification on this particular tax measure; it would be a victim of double taxation. Take for instance hundred and thirty-six (136) television stations that have no billing system, how are you able to take them on board in other to get them on board in other to be electronically taxed?”.

He added that we were moving back to chasing functional economy instead of driving towards a paperless economy that remains the fundamental factor to the country’s key objectives.

Again, re-introduction of Agyapa deal, they have seen what collateralization has done to the road fund; at the same time contractors remain unpaid as some have blood pressure over long standing arrears by government.

 “We have again seen, what collateralization has done to GETFund; today as we speak, out of the one point four billion that was received from GETFund, I am sure government is indebted to GETfund, not less than five hundred billion Ghana cedis, Nation Health Insurance is surviving on bonds”, he noted.

 Mr. Iddrisu said the future of the country should not be endangered by re- introduction of Agyapa as we are still suffering. There is still unemployment in the country and what the finance minister has done is to share with us their micro-economic indicators, inflation, and interest rate that are doing well.

But no report on how unemployment is being addressed and as a country we should be interested in that.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Speaker of the Eight (8) Parliament Rt. Hon Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin said the current Parliament is in the right position not to allow itself to be bullied into playing second fiddle to the Executive arm of government.

According to him Parliament can remove the president, but the president cannot remove the Speaker, and was confident that the House would ensure parliament is adequately resourced to be able to execute its mandate.

“I am happy with the cooperation of both the Majority and Minority Leaders at the Parliamentary Bord Serves level, that was where we proposed that two percent of the total revenue to be allocated to Parliament next year”.

At a post budget workshop for Members of Parliament (MPs) on Saturday, November 20, 2021, he noted that the Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta disagree with the two percent proposal, but want his budget approved.

“This is simply a reminder to him of what his father did, it is not a threat, but just a reminder, we have been fighting for ourselves but the judiciary cannot do same, we have to fight for them.”

Again, he pointed out that the Parliament represent the people, hence the reason when he moves outside Ghana, he extends the president’s warm regards to the participants and the President represent that state.

“We have been cloth with enough powers to approve or not to approve budget statement depending of its relevance and value, you should get control over your finances”, he asserted.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Parliament of Ghana would on Tuesday, November 23, 2021 start debate on the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government, Majority Leader Osei-Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu told the House on Friday, November 19, 2021.

Mr. Osei-Kyei-Bonsu made this known on the floor of the House when he presented the Business Statement for the following week.

On Tuesday, November 23, 2021 the debate would touch on Finance, Environment, Gender, Foreign Affairs, Youth and Sports and Employment.

The following day, Wednesday, November 24, 2021 would be Health, Trade and Industry, Communication, Local Government, Lands and Forestry, Works and Housing, Energy and Mining.

On Thursday, November 25, 2021 the debate would touch on Education, Agriculture, Roads and Transport, Defence and Interior, Judiciary, Parliament, Independent Governance Institutions and Government machinery.

The debate would be concluded on Friday, November 26, 2021 where leadership of the House conclude the debate.

Each day, two lawmakers from each side of the political divide would be expected to contribute to the debate, where seconder and Ranking member of the Finance Committee would be allotted twenty minutes.

Other committee chairpersons and Ranking members fifteen minutes and all other members ten minutes.

Sitting for next week would commence at 10:00am with extended sitting. The Leader of government business explained that the House would suspend sitting at 2:00pm and resume by 3:00pm and close around 6:00pm.

Meanwhile, for next week, forty-eight (48) questions are supposed to be asked, including eleven (11) urgent questions and thirty-seven (37) oral questions.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Speaker of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament, Dr. Sidie Mohammed Tunis on Friday, November 19, 2021 held a meeting with the Nigerien President, H. E. Mohammed Bazoum.

The meeting was aimed at soliciting support for the direct election of lawmakers into the ECOWAS Parliament.

During the meeting, which took place at the Presidential Palace, further discussions on the state of the ECO and its importance to regional integration were held.

The Speaker was accompanied by the first deputy speaker of the Community Parliament Ahmed Idris Wase, Mohammed Ibn Chambas and former President Mahamadou Issoufou.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

The Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme would shore up revenue from three crop sector by over 14 billion dollars, with each tree crop estimated to raise at least 2 billion dollars like cocoa.

Government is fully committed to making this a reality and has demonstrated in no uncertain terms, its determination, with the establishment of the Tree Crop Authority as the regulatory body for ensuring maximum returns on the huge investments by government and the private sector, Dr Akoto Afriyie told Parliament.

Responding to the Member of Parliament for Asene/Akroso/Manso, George Kwame Aboagye’s question on the achievements or progress made since the implementation of the planting for Export and Rural Development programme, he said “Mr. Speaker, the Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) Programme, is a market oriented rural based agricultural value chain intervention, driven mainly by the private sector. Th programme is designed to diversify the Ghanaian export portfolio and accelerate rural development. Seven crops are being promoted under the programme. These are coffee, coconut, rubber, oil palm, cashew, mango and shea.”

Following the launch of the PERD programme in April 2019, after feasibility studies were undertaken in 2018, approximately 294 million certified planting materials (coffee, coconut, rubber, oil palm, cashew, mango and shea) have been supplied to 220,257 smallholder farmers and 35 commercial farmers under the PERD Diversified Integrated Project. The beneficiaries of the seedlings are located in 115 districts across the 16 regions.

He further said, with the introduction of the PERD programme, a new chapter has been opened to unlock the huge potential of the Ghana Tree Crop sector. Our goal is to develop each of the crops to the level of cocoa, Ghana’s leading export crop, which rakes in over 2 billion dollars revenue annually.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Akoto Afriyie has assured Parliament that tractors and accessories at the Agriculture Engineering Service Directorate are being cared for and have not been left at the mercy of the weather.

This came to light when Member of Parliament for Ejura-Sekyedumase, Muhammad Bawah Braimah wanted to know why hundreds of Cabrio tractors and motorbikes imported over two years have been left at the mercy of the weather.

Dr. Afriyie reiterated to the House that, as part of efforts by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to improve access to mechanized services through the mechanization module of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme, a range of tractors and handheld equipment were imported from Czech Republic under a 10 million Euro from Exim Bank facility in 2019/2020.

“The equipment are on sale to interested farmers at a government subsidized rate of 40% with a specified terms of sale of outright payment. In total 220 Cabrio compact tractors were imported by the Ministry.

So far, only 10 of the 220 tractors had been purchased by interested farmers leaving a total of 210 Cabrio tractors.

The slow patronage of the tractors thus far is due to the policy of outright payment governing the sale of the facilities. The strict enforcement of the policy by the Ministry is because of a high rate of default in the payments of tractors by beneficiaries under a hire purchase policy in the past.

The Ministry has now identified rice farmer groups in the valleys of several forest regions and we are arranging to distribute the Cabrio tractors to them on credit instead of to individual farmers, he stated.

On the question of motorbikes, the Ministry currently has only seven (7) motorbikes in stock out of a total of three thousand (3,000) procured.

“Mr. Speaker, the motorbikes were procured under the Modernizing Agriculture in Ghana (MAG) sponsored by Canadian Government.

 The procurement constitutes part of Government strategy to enhance Extension Service delivery to farmers and other shareholders in the regions, Out of the Three Thousand (3,000) motorbikes, Two Thousand, Nine Hundred and Ninety-Three (2,993) have been deployed to the regions. The distribution was done from June 2019 to August 2021 leaving seven (7).

The remaining 7 motorbikes will be distributed to the National directorates to facilitate work. It is expected that the distribution will be completed by the end of the year.”

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Minister for Food and Agriculture Dr. Akoto Afriyie has told Parliament that fertilizers are imported into Ghana and the prices are determined by the international market and there is little his Ministry can do about reducing the prices.

According to him what his Ministry is doing is to ensure there is reduction in agro inputs or machines as they are exempted from paying Value Added Tax (VAT) on it to make them affordable to farmers.

This came to light on the floor of the House on Thursday, November 18, 2021 when Member of Parliament Adaklu asked the minister on steps taken by his Ministry to reduce the rising cost of fertilizer and improve availability and access to farmers in an urgent question.

The Minister further told the House there are few organic fertilizers being produced in Ghana to that farmers can access.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

Speaker of Parliament Rt Hon Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin has directed that the Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwesi Amoako Atta has no powers to suspend road toll collection by a statement signed by him.

According to him, the Minister who is a senior member of the House might have reacted wrongly, “I call on him to honourably withdraw this directive, failure to do so would be a serious breach of the directives of the Speaker, and that would amount to contempt of Parliament”.

The Speaker gave this directive when the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu on Thursday, November 18, 2021 raised the issue on the floor of the House.

The Speaker further noted that the budget presented by the finance minister was on behalf of the President and was supposed to take effect in January 2022 when approved by the House, and noted that until the budget is approved, all that is contained in the budget is proposal, as it is in the budget for 2022 for the road tolls to be abolished.

“We have the authority to approve, they, the Executive arm of government have the duty to lay before the House those policy proposals, until they are approved nobody, I mean nobody to start implementing something that does not exist”.

As to whether that amount to the disrespect to the House, he said “that is where I disagree, it is not disrespect to the House, and since this is not a court of law, the Minister might have misunderstood the law and it is for parliament to draw his attention and tell him that “he has no such authority”, he indicated.

According to him, in spite of all the legal expressions exhibited on the floor of the House, the Roads and Highways Minister has no such powers to suspend collection of road tolls per his statement issued.   “It is not a matter of operationalisation of the law, there is no such law, and there is a proposal in the budget, the Executive on their own cannot just suspend the law if they have any difficulties they should come back to the House”, the speaker advised.

Speaker Alban Bagbin noted that if the need to suspend collection of road tolls was urgent, it could be brought to the House under a certificate of urgency and since 1993 that has been the practice. The House would have passed that into law on Wednesday, November 17, 2021.

Meanwhile, the Speaker’s directive did not go down well with the Majority Leader Osei-Kyei-Mensah-Bons when he got the opportunity to speak, he pointed out that his thinking was that, it should have been a directive from the House and not from the Speaker.

But the Speaker insisted that this was his directives, and if the Majority Leader had any issue he knows what to do to challenge the directives of the Speaker.

Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com

The Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament, Rt. Hon. Dr. Sidie Mohamed Tunis has on Wednesday, 17th November 17, 2021 held separate meetings with Nigerien Authorities in Niamey, Republic of Niger.

Dr. Tunis with his delegation comprising members of the Ad Hoc Committee, and secretariat staff on a study tour for direct elections into the ECOWAS Parliament first met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Niger, Mr. Hassoumi Massaoudou, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Niamey.

During the meeting, the Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament thanked the Minister for the courtesy extended the delegation and outlined the purpose of the visit. He said that the ECOWAS Parliament is the representative forum of the community and it has a pivotal role to play in discussions surrounding the state of democracy in the region.

 Furthermore, Rt. Honourable Tunis lamented that it is unfortunate that the Parliament cannot adequately perform its duties due to the circumstances surrounding its formation. The Speaker recalled that since the establishment of the Parliament, it has been transitioning with members not directly elected by the people.

 The Speaker also credited the call for direct elections into the ECOWAS Parliament to the Former President of Niger, His Excellency Mahamadou Issoufou, who at the inauguration of the 5th Legislature of the Parliament, in Niamey, underscored the need for members of the ECOWAS Parliament to be directly elected by the people they represent.

Additionally, Speaker Tunis said that following the appointment of Former President Issoufou as Chief Advocate and Dr. Ibn Chambers as Assistant Chief Advocate for the direct election of members into the ECOWAS Parliament, sufficient work has been done to lay out the framework for its achievement.

 As a result, the Speaker disclosed that the Ad Hoc Committee will begin engaging electoral bodies across the region next year to hold technical discussions surrounding the modalities for election.

 Therefore, Rt Honourable Tunis called for the support of the Honorable Minister of Foreign Affairs for what he described as a democratic advocacy, especially at the level of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers.

For his part, the Minister indicated that he views the call for direct elections of members into ECOWAS Parliament as not just political, but technical.

 “The call for direct elections of members into the ECOWAS Parliament is a technical issue and it ties into regional integration, free movement and democracy across the region,” he said.

 The Nigerien Foreign Minister further outlined the many issues that ECOWAS is grappling with, including the issues of single currency, free movement, poverty, as well as regional integration, and said a democratically competent Parliament has an important role to play in resolving some of the issues.

 He expressed the optimism that the proposal will be considered at all levels of the ECOWAS governance structure, which would be a very key step towards progress.

During his day’s programme, Dr. Tunis and Delegation later met with the Honorable Speaker of the National Assembly of Niger, Rt. Hon. Seine Oumarou, at the National Assembly Complex.

 In that meeting, Dr. Tunis thanked Speaker Oumarou and the National Assembly for the warm reception and hospitality extended his delegation.

 He outlined the purpose of the visit, being the advocacy for direct elections of Members into the ECOWAS Parliament.

 The ECOWAS Parliament’s Speaker also recalled the first step taken to achieve direct universal suffrage at the ECOWAS Parliament, which was the establishment of an Ad Hoc Committee on study for Direct Elections into the ECOWAS Parliament. The Committee is headed by the First Deputy Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, Honorable Ahmed Idris Wase, who is also First Deputy Speaker of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s House of Representatives.

Honorable Tunis disclosed that a proposal has been drafted on the subject and will be brought to the attention of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers and the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government early next year.

 He called for the support of all Member States, beginning with the Republic of Niger, which he branded as the birthplace for the advocacy.

For his part, the First Deputy Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, Honorable Ahmed Idris Wase, thanked Speaker Tunis for the honor afforded him to chair the Committee and expressed the hope that his committee will deliver.

Honourable Wase also underscored the many challenges there are to face, but was also confident that with determination and sacrifice, direct elections of members into the ECOWAS Parliament can be attained.

In response, the Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Niger, Rt. Hon. Seine Oumarou, thanked Honorable Speaker Tunis and his delegation for the visit and pledged the support of government in any way to make the visit successful.

Ghanamps.com

Government in its quest to addressing youth unemployment is to launch a new initiative called YouStart.
The YouStart initiative is a key vehicle to create 1 million jobs in 3 years under the GhanaCARES, the finance minister Ken Ofori Ata has announced on Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at the presentation of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy in parliament.

Mr. Ofori Ata explained that the “YouStart is the vehicle for supporting young entrepreneurs to gain access to capital, training, technical skills and mentoring to enable them launch and operate their own businesses.”

Implementing Partners of the YouStart Initiative.

According to the minister, partners in the implementation of the YouStart programme would include the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), and partner financial institutions.

He further indicated that entrepreneurs will be able to apply for support through a dedicated YouStart online portal. NEIP will also engage our Faith-Based Organisations as partners for the delivery of essential artisanal skills.

YouStart Products

The finance minister also disclosed that the YouStart will offer the following products:
• Soft loans of up to GH¢50,000 to help start-ups (in particular by young graduates and school leavers) and small businesses to expand;
• Starter packs (Soft loans tied to equipment acquisition) of up to GH¢50,000 for individuals and GH¢100,000 for associations and groups;
• A standardised loan package of between GH¢100,000 to GH¢400,000 at concessional rates for SMEs from financial institutions; Building a Sustainable Entrepreneurial Nation: Fiscal Consolidation and Job Creation 93.

The YouStart initiative aims to support the youth to develop commercially viable businesses. To this end YouStart is designed to instill proper commercial orientation in the beneficiaries. This will include financial institutions determining the credit metrics and GEA and NEIP providing training support especially for the standardised SME loans, he explained.

“Mr Speaker, YouStart dovetails into our overall ambitious private sector growth strategy, anchored on a revitalised financial sector, establishment of Development Bank Ghana, and converting the Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) into a permanent investment vehicle. The objective is to raise long-term capital to provide equity investments to strengthen financial institutions, and restructure companies in the hospitality, education, and export-oriented industries that were devastated by COVID-19. YouStart will be operational by March 2022.”

Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com