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Standard Bank is Africa’s most valuable banking brand for the second year
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MONDAY 27 February 2023 Issue No. 19
A NEW THINKING
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Ghana’s local debtscore raised by S&P as domestic default cured
country settles its domestic debt exchange with bondholders. The nation’s foreign debt remains rated in default. Ghana’s local credit score was raised to CCC+ from SD — or selective default — by S&P after new domestic debt securities were delivered to creditors, according to a Friday statement. The credit assessor continues to score the West African nation’s foreign-currency debt at SD as the government works to restructure the external bonds, wrote analysts Frank Gill and Ravi Bhatia. “We understand that the authorities aim to lower debt to GDP to about 55% over a five-year horizon,” they wrote. “Discussions with holders of foreign currency instruments are continuing.”
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US$6.1bn MSME financing gap in Ghana …Commercial banks in quandary amid DDEP By Samuel Kojo DARKO
Ghana has been engaging investors since late last year to restructure about $30 billion of its $46 billion in local and international debt. It recently completed the first part of a domestic restructuring, with investors exchanging 83 billion cedis ($6.7 billion), or 64% of holdings, for new securities, against an overall target of 80%. It aims to start “substantive” dis-
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ByKeun Lee
Industrial policy has returned to government agendas across the developed and developing world. While the US Inflation Reduction Act has shocked America’s Asian and European trading partners, the Biden administration’s signature climate-change legislation is just 4
the latest in a series of recent policies that seemingly fly in the face of World Trade Organization rules. At a time of growing economic and political uncertainty, it is hardly surprising that governments are increasingly embracing industrial policy. Massive government intervention,
We’ll keenly monitor every step in ‘Gold4Oil’ chain – Opoku Prempeh assures Energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh has assured that his ministry will keenly monitor every step in the Gold for Oil programme value chain from the ship that
brings the oil, through delivery to the BDCs, to the OMCs and to the pumps. This, according to Dr Opoku Prempeh will ensure that the purposes for which the pro-
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Government launches $7m entrepreneurship programme The government has ty of entrepreneurship hubs launched a programme in the country. aimed at building the capaci4
after all, underpinned East Asia’s “economic miracle” between the 1960s and 1990s. Political scientist Chalmers Johnson attributed Japan’s postwar economic boom to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which dominated Japanese policymaking from 1949 to 2000.
Similarly, economist Alice Amsden argued that South Korea’s transformation into an economic powerhouse relied on subsidies and tariffs that encouraged the formation of giant, state-backed industrial conglomerates. Despite the contributions of industrial policy to the East
Asian growth miracle, the rise of neoliberal economics in the West made it taboo there. That began to change in 2008, however, as the global financial crisis created a seemingly insatiable appetite for government intervention. Faced with a rapidly growing China and a looming climate catastrophe, economist Mariana Mazzucato and others have reimagined industrial policy as a way to achieve a mission-orient-
Genevieve Sackey to take over Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company President Akufo-Addo has nominated Madam Genevieve Sackey for appointment as the new Managing Director of Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company Limited (GCMCL). This nomination is contained in a letter dated February, 21st
and signed by the Executive Secretary to the President, Nana Bediatuo Asante. “Kindly take the necessary steps to regularise the said appointment in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Companies Act 2019 (Act 992) and the regulations of the
Company,” portions of the release stated. Nana Bediatuo Asante extended to the new MD, “the President’s best wishes.” Genevieve Sackey’s nomination comes after the immediate past CEO, Frances Essiam resigned.