SARPONG'S BLOG

By: Fred Yaw Sarpong, Daily Express The Daily Express can exclusively report that some multinational commercial banks operating in the country are refusing to report financial fraud cases that have occurred in their banks to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service for fear of bad publicity. Although Daily Express has exclusive evidence of some of the fraudulent cases, and interacted with some of the victims, checks from the CID indicate that the banks involved did not report such cases to them, despite compensating the victims financially, as evidence of admonition of the fraud. In one instance, a victim of the fraud (name withheld) revealed to the Daily Express that late last year, some fraudsters managed to withdraw thousands of Ghana Cedis from his account via an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). He said upon prompting the bank which is situated between the Appolo Theater, near Kwame Nkrumah circle and the Nima Police Station

By: Fred Yaw Sarpong, Daily Express Even though the establishment of Microfinance companies in Ghana is to help small businesses to get capital for their business activities, at the same time these companies are reaping heavily from these small businesses by making lot of money from them. The interest rates charges by these companies are more than what the commercial and universal banks are even charging. These companies’ interest rates are more than double of what even Ghana Commercial Banks and other big banks charged their clients. While the both commercial and universal banks in Ghana are charging interest rate of between 20% and 25% per annum, these microfinance firms charge between 4% and 6.5% per a month. This makes the microfinance firms gain more from these small businesses. While commercial and universal banks are charging between 20% and 25% per annum, the microfinance companies are charging between 48% and 78% per annum. The worse part of this

FAKS Investigative Services, a research and background investigative company is organizing the first every Diaspora Radio Stations Awards, to award online Ghanaian radio stations toward their contribution to educate, inform and entertain Ghanaian online radio listeners based in abroad. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FAKS Investigative Service, Mr. Fred Yaw Sarpong mentioned that, the contribution of Ghanaian online radio stations based outside Ghana must be recognise and awarded for their quest to serve Ghanaians based outside the motherland, with Ghanaian music, sports, culture, politics, social and entertainment. He said, the online radio stations have served with programming’s that always makes them still feels at home and keep them in touch with current affairs and happening at home. Mr. Fred Yaw Sarpong and his company over the years have been organising surveys on the Performance of Ministers, Deputies, Regional Ministers and Members of Parliaments.

By: Fred Yaw Sarpong A study from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) shows that Ghana has made progress in the health sector, stating that Ghana stands out in the region and also among lower- middle income countries worldwide. The ODI report said child nutrition outcomes have improved consistently, and Ghana outperforms other countries in the region on most nutrition-related indicators. The report ranks Ghana 13th out of 51 countries for reductions in child stunting measured by deviation-from-fit. It said there has also been impressive progress on immunization, which has been a priority under the strategy of the Ministry of Health (MoH) to enhance preventative health care. The report noted that between 1998 and 2008, child immunization rates increased dramatically, from 19% to 70% (Ghana Statistical Service, 2009). By 2008, Ghana’s measles-vaccination rate stood at 91% – well above the regional average of 75% – and there had been no death from measles in the co