Business Analyst - June 7

Tuesday, June 7, 2022
CEOS, BOARDS OF SOES
MUST BE SUBJECTED TO
STRICT KPIS
RePoRtS from the Finance Ministry have
revealed that state-owned enterprises
(Soes) reported a ¢5.3-billion loss in their
operations in the 2020 fiscal year.
It further emerged that some Soes had
been reluctant to submit annual accounts
since 2017, a development which means
that the loss position of Soes could be
worse.
to fix the poor state of some of the
entities, the Finance Ministry has warned
that it will no longer support request for
assistance by Soes that fail to meet the
reporting requirements specified in the
Public Financial Act.
Speaking at a forum in Accra a couple of
months ago, a Deputy Finance Minister, Dr
John Kumah, said Soes consistently posted
aggregate net losses from 2015 of ¢2.1
billion to the latest figure in 2020, ¢5.3
billion, in the Draft 2020 Soe Report.
the state of some Soes in the country
has, in recent times, become a matter of
concern to policy analysts, who have
described the development not only as
unfortunate but also unacceptable.
Particularly at a time when the public
debt has risen beyond what the Bretton
Woods institutions describe as sustainable
levels, the last thing we should see are the
incessant losses being recorded by Soes
which are capable of making profits or at
least breaking even to free the public purse.
the Newspaper is appalled by the report
of losses by some Soes and would want the
government to take drastic action to stop
the financial hemorrhaging.
It has become increasingly clear that
some of the appointees to the boards and
executive positions of these enterprises are
not capable of managing them.
Since the inception of the Fourth
Republic, it has become clear that whenever
there is a change in government, the first
thing the incoming administration considers
is drive away all appointees of the previous
government and fill some of those
vacancies with people who are not only
politically tainted but also completely lack
the business and management acumen to
run the enterprises they have been placed
in.
Much as we do not entirely fault that
move, we strongly believe that managers
who had proved to be doing well; that is,
making profits for the enterprises they
superintend, should be made to continue,
instead of bringing new people who will
turn those enterprises from profit ways to
become loss-making institutions.
Artisanal fishers blame
dwindling fish stock
on climate change
KOBINA Atta has been
fishing in Sekondi on
the western coast of
Ghana since age 20. Now
at 51, he complains
about the changes in the seasons, rise
in sea level, and dwindling stock of
fishes, having a toll on his livelihood.
“These days, the seasons have
changed, we cannot differentiate
between the Harmattan and the
rainy seasons. It can rain today and
in the next minute, the sun will be
blazing. This really disrupts our
activities,” he said.
This, he believes, has brought in
its wake an increasing decline in fish
stock and catch as fishing boats often
returned from sea almost empty.
Atta, like many other artisanal
fishers, has a strong conviction that
changes in the climate is one of the
driving forces behind the
phenomenon.
Ghana’s fisheries sector
According to the Ministry of Food
and Agriculture there are more than
two million people in Ghana, or
around 10 per cent of the population,
who rely directly on fishing and
related activities for their livelihoods.
A report published by the
Environmental Justice Foundation
(EJF) in 2018 said Ghana accounts for
about 11 per cent of the total artisanal
canoes in West Africa with smallscale
fishing employing around 80
per cent of all fishers in the country.
The EJF said widespread illegal,
unreported and unregulated (IUU)
fishing and destructive practices
such as the use of dynamite,
monofilament nets, DDT, and light,
continually cause irreplaceable
damage to marine ecosystems.
The impact of climate change
In Ghana, ocean warming and
acidification, arguably the two most
dramatic effects of climate change on
oceanographic conditions, are
already wreaking havoc on those
who make their living from the sea.
This is coupled with widespread
IUU fishing, which spans from
indiscriminate use of chemicals and
explosives by canoe fishermen to
increasing light fishing by both
small-scale and tuna vessels.
Most fishermen complain that
surface water fishes appear to be
disappearing with reduction in the
sizes of the fishes, attributing it to
the changes in the marine
environment.
The rise in sea levels has also
resulted in coastal erosion, high tides
in recent times, tidal waves affecting
fishers, and storms making fishers
unable to go for fishing expeditions
as they wished.
“Nowadays we have noticed some
changes in the sea. We have realised
that the seawater has become
warmer than it used to be,” said Atta.
Another fisherman, Samuel
Tetteh, who has been fishing since
age 15, said: “These days the fishes do
not stay at the surface of the sea, they
go deep down. You know for us in
artisanal fishing, we have to see the
fishes before we cast our nets, so
sometimes we have to go long hours
before we can see some fishes and
cast our nets”.
At age 41, Tetteh said though
climate change was a contributory
factor, it could not be solely blamed
for the decline in fish stock and
mentioned engagement in light
fishing among other IUU practices as
other factors.
“The concentration of carbonic
acid at the surface of the seawater
makes it uncomfortable for fishes to
stay at the surface. The fish now
prefer to stay at the bottom than at
the surface,” he said.
Another challenge has to do with
the rise in sea levels, which the
fishermen say is destroying many
coastal lands.
“Sometimes we are unable to go
to sea because of the high tides. We
believe that the tidal waves as we
have been witnessing in recent times
are all as a result of changes in the
climate,” Mr Tetteh said.
Nana Kweigya is a fisherman at
Anomabo in the Central Region and
the Chairman of the Canoe and
Fishing Gear Owners Association of
Ghana.
He said climate change is
impacting negatively on artisanal
fishing.
“Climate change has affected
fisheries and continues to affect
small-scale fisheries especially. There
are pieces of evidence that point to
the fact that it has increased acidity
of the seawater and has, in turn,
affected the production of fish,” he
said.
Nana Kweigya said the sizes of
fish had reduced and also believed
that they were all as a result of global
warming and climate change.
That, he said, had affected fish
production because many of the eggs
were destroyed long before they
matured, resulting in a decline in fish
stock.
Nana Kweigya explained that it
was the reason fishermen had
resulted to using light to attract fish
before they cast their net.
“General I will say climate
change is negatively impacting on
fishing and limiting access to fish by
artisanal fishers,” he said, and called
for serious discussions on how to
mitigate the impact of climate
change on fishing and related
activities.
However, in contrast, Mr. Socrates
Segbor, the Fisheries Programmes
Manager of EJF, believes that there
are not enough scientific data to
prove that climate change is
impacting fishing.
Though he did not rule out its
possible negative impact, he said the
stories of the fishermen remained
their opinion until they were
scientifically proven.
For him, the lack of scientific data
about the impact of climate change
gave people the opportunity to
speculate and lux about what to do to
address the issues of IUU.
He, therefore, appealed to Ghana’s
Fisheries Commission and other
academic institutions to undertake
scientific research on the impact of
climate change in the fisheries sector
to confirm or reject the opinions of
the fishermen.
By Afedzi Abdullah
Source: GNA