SARPONG'S BLOG

By Fred Sarpong The Petroleum Commission (PC), the regulator of the petroleum industry in Ghana has started registering all companies operating in and around the petroleum sector in the country. The initiative by the commission is to identify the number of both local and international companies currently operating in the petroleum sector. Dr. Juliette Twumasi-Anokye, Legal Advisor to the commission announced this at the official launch of the Offshore West African conference in Accra. ‘It will also allow us to know the number of Ghanaians employed within the petroleum sector,’ said Dr. Twumasi-Anokye. In an interview with Business Week , Dr. Twumasi-Anokye said they are registering every company operating under the laws of Ghana in the petroleum sector, including the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC). According to her, during the registration all companies must pay fees to the commission. She stated that local companies, with majority shareholding of about 51% bel...

By Fred Sarpong The year 2013 has started with a year-on-year inflation rate of 8.8%, recorded in January 2013. This is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This means that the general price level went up by 8.8% over the one year period from January 2012 to January 2013. The monthly change rate for January 2013 was 2.1%. This means that the general price level went up by 2.1% for the one month period between December 2012 and January 2013. The monthly rate for December 2012 was 0.7%. Dr. Philomena Nyarko, the acting Government Statistician announced this to the media in Accra last week. She stated that t he food inflation rate of 3.9% was about three times lower than the non-food inflation rate 11.6% According to her the food and non-alcoholic beverages group recorded an average year-on-year inflation rate of 3.9%, the same as recorded in December 2012. Under this group, eight subgroups recorded inflation rates above the group’s average inflation rate of 3.9%. ...

By Fred Sarpong Over 60 both local and international companies will meet in Accra International Conference Centre to take part in Offshore West Africa Conference and Exhibition, from 19 – 21 March, 2013. The international conference is under the theme ‘Deepwater Discoveries, Emerging Opportunities.’ The three-day event expected to addresses key technology and development issues for the West African Offshore oil and gas market, through a comprehensive educational program. This year event comes after a successful 2012 event held in Abuja, Nigeria, which attracted international audience from 32 countries around the world, including many major operators, with over 20% of attendees coming from outside of the West African region. Ghana hosted similar event in Accra in both 2010 and 2011. The premier technical forum for West African offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry return to Ghana this year, for the 17 th annual edition. The Ghana National Petroleum Co...

By Fred Sarpong Despite its contribution to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is significantly low, the communications sector is one of the very important sectors to Ghana’s economy. For some years now the communications sector contribution to Ghana’s inflation has remain the same. As part of the non-food items in the CPI basket, the communications national weight has consistently be 0.31%, of the total non-food national weight of 55.09%. In the month January 2013 inflation, the communications sector contributed a year-on-year rate of 0.4% to the non-food sub-sector. But its contribution to January 2013 inflation was 0.0%. This was the same in December, 2012. According to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the price level of communications services such as telephone charges (with a weight of 90%), EMS charges (5% weight) and standard postage (5% weight) in CPI basket, has remained largely unchanged over some years. The regional contribution of the communications se...

By Fred Sarpong Some Micro Finance and Savings and Loans institutions in the country seem to be making lot of money from Ghanaian businesses and some individuals who go for loans from these institutions. Investigation by this paper shows that what these non-bank financial institutions do is to collect more money from these clients through the payment of interest rate charges on loans. Business Week gathered that instead of these financial companies to use reducing balance method to calculate the interest on loans to clients, they rather used straight line method. With straight line method, the actual interest rate goes up, but with the reducing balance; the actual interest rate remains the same. For instance, if a client borrows GHc15, 000.00 for a period of six month at a monthly interest rate of 4%, the principal monthly repayment will be GHc2, 500.00 plus a fixed monthly interest charged of GHc600.00. With this the client will be paying GHc3, 100.00 as monthly rep...