It would also take place in Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa in partnership with the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF).

Participants of the roundtable, which is slated for 22 April 2010, would include executives from leading companies, the Ministry of Water Resources, Works, and Housing, as well as key Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

It is expected to facilitate the engagement of companies to reduce business risks.

The round table discussion is also aimed at advancing national policy goals, which impact positively on communities and ecosystems.

The African Development Bank confirmed that the overall economic loss in Africa was due to the lack of access to safe water and basic sanitation that is estimated at $28.4 billion a year.

Water is a vital resource that drives economies and ensures healthy livelihoods.

Currently, there is pressure on Ghanaian businesses to manage water supplies to reduce the effects of climate change, as rising demand from population growth and industrialization takes effect.

At the end programme, participants at the national discussion are supposed to produce white papers that would identify opportunities and innovative collaborations to efficiently manage Ghana’s water.

The white papers would be presented at the UN Global Compact Business Leader’s Summit in June 2010, New York to provide an African perspective on water policy.

It would form part of the private sector’ contributions towards the Millennium Development Goal (7) that seeks to improve access to water and sanitation.

“The private sector, as a user and provider of water resources, is an important actor in managing Ghana’s water.

These roundtables provide businesses with opportunity to engage directly with key stakeholders to achieve a more equitable and efficient use of the country’s water resources,” said Ekwunife Okoli, General Manager, Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited.

Speaking at the launch in Accra, Mr. Greg Metcalf, Managing Director of ABL, said the product was developed after careful research, to satisfy the growing needs of consumers who yearned for a drink that was unique and natural.

“It is a home grown premium lager that meets international standards of quality and taste,” he said.

Mr Metcalf said, Club Gold had been carefully produced with the choicest ingredients and international credentials from around the world.

Mr Chris Wuiff-Ceaser, Marketing Director of ABL, said the development of the brand has been through an in-depth understanding of the preferences of target consumers.

“We discovered through this process that our consumers value good quality brand that have style and, more importantly, substance”.

Mr Wuiff-Ceaser said innovation was one of the key pillars of growth of ABL, and that the company’s products met the young adults’ drive to make choices that reflected their modern views and attitudes.

He said, the drink was targeted at young adults who were fun-loving, sophisticated, adventurous and yet individualistic.

Source: GNA

Policy and research think tank IMANI Ghana has urged government to as a matter of urgency consider the passage and implementation of the national draft policy on alcohol.

In an interview with Spectator Business, Mr Mensah said the preponderance of incentives to foreign investors at the expense of their local counterparts is a real disincentive to those wealthy Ghanaians who would want to invest in the country.

Comparing Ghana to countries like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, he said those countries duly encouraged foreign investment but also motivated their own citizens to invest in their countries, which is good for overall investment prospects as well as the national psyche.

“In those countries, the right environment is created for local investment just as foreign investors are equally motivated, so that the overall industrial picture is clearly fair and balanced, and local investors don’t feel lost out,” he said.

“It gives the local investor the urge to invest in his own country because he is supported, motivated and protected from undue competition from outside.”

He noted for instance that certain countries like Nigeria strictly restrict the importation of certain goods to give their local companies that leverage they need to grow.

While hoping that government policies will from now become more favourable to motivate local moneybags to invest in the economy, he hoped that this will be further complemented by a more predictable and stable economic environment that should bolster companies to perform better.

“Companies are more comfortable where there is some predictability in the overall economic policy direction of the country,” he said. “For instance where interest rates are changed in a progressive manner there will be a predictable economic environment congenial for business practice,” he said.

Asked if companies will fare better this year, Mr Mensah said the global recession has slowed down Ghana’s economic prospects; people have less money to spend and the cost of conducting business has gone up because the cost of credit is up.

“It will, however, take the effective management of government to provide that auspicious environment for business to thrive,” he added.

Martyn Mensah also said the poor savings culture of Ghanaians was not helping people and the financial sector. He said the banks and financial institutions need to roll out better policies that would encourage people to save, build capital and invest in businesses. He alluded to people finding it difficult to save because packages presented to them are not favourable, and some feel that inflation, low interests and bank charges will wipe off their meagre savings.

He lamented the materialistic lifestyle of Ghanaians and the unnecessary investment they make into things like funerals and four-wheel drives, instead of thinking about putting what they have into viable businesses.

Mr Mesnah took the opportunity to urge Ghanaians to be disciplined and responsible, so that “it will be the collective responsibility to make Ghana a more habitable place to live instead of the filth that spells a looming danger for this country in the foreseeable future.”

Read more…

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.

Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.

The president said this when a Guinness delegation, led by Mr. Stuart Fletcher, the president of Diageo International, the parent company of GGBL paid a courtesy call on him at the Castel, Osu, yesterday.

“The migration of the youth to the cities continues to be a burden and so my government is happy that you are partnering the Ministry of Agriculture to provide jobs for the rural folks through the promotion of the Sorghum project in the Northern Region”, he said.

Earlier, the Diageo president, who is on a three-day working visit  to acquaint himself with the operations of GGBL, had told President Mills that because Ghana was a very important market for Diageo, the company was committed to being a responsible corporate citizen by supporting the government to address the country’s development needs.

He cited the company’s flag ship corporate social responsibility programme, the water of Life one million challenges that is committed to providing one million Africans with potable water each year.

Since its inception in 2006, three million Africans in 12 different countries, including Ghana, have been provided with potable water.

In Ghana, 350,000 Ghanaians have been provided with potable water over a three-year period through the construction of 36boreholes, as well as the distribution of hundreds of water filters. Total investment to date is GH¢1,000,000 ($700,000).

The distribution of the boreholes is also undertaken in line with government’s nation-wide approach to development.

Mr. Fletcher further mentioned that Ghana was to receive €250,000 as seed funding towards a new enterprise initiative to build a sustainable market for Crystal Pur TM, an affordable water filter that eliminates 99.99 percent of all water-borne bacteria and parasites, with no chemicals or mechanical parts.

The initiative will benefit over 250,000 Ghanaians in areas where surface water is predominantly used and water is boiled before drinking. The funding will come from the Arthur Guinness Fund, which was launched in celebration of 250 years of greatness of its iconic brand Guinness.

The courtesy call was also an opportunity to introduce Mr. Ekwunife Okoli, the new Managing Director GGBL, to president Mills.

Speaking to the press, Mr. Okoli said “In line with our plan to develop local sources for our brewing materials, GGBL has continued to promote Sorghum development in northern Ghana.”

In collaboration with Technoserve, an agricultural NGO, significant progress has been made. The number of farm families that have been networked into the supply chain has reached over 5,000. During the first three years of the project (2005-2008), these families have delivered about 2,600 metric tonnes to GGBL and earned about $1.04 million in new cash income.

Diageo International comprises several business units across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

The delegation to the seat of government was made up of Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Okoli, Mr. Edwin Baffour, Head, Corporate Relations, GGBL, and Mr. P.V Obeng, a non-executive Director and Oheneba Charles, Head of the external PR agency.

Major cities across the world simultaneously celebrated Guinness Day on Thursday.

In Ghana, the event took place at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra and the venue was whitewashed with the colours of Guinness.

Ama Okyere Marketing Director, GGBL in an interview with Myjoyonline said “All over the world today, everyone is celebrating today September 24 and in Ghana we are declaring it as a Guinness day and we are going to celebrate it every year.

“It gives us an opportunity to actually reward, acknowledge and recognize all the good people who have been with us throughout the years.”

The event was also used to reward 30 consumers who took part in the Arthur Guinness 250th Anniversary National Consumer Promotion. Mr Lawrence Darko won the Grand price of a Nissan Quanshai.

Praye, Tinny and the nation’s fastest rapper Sarkodie treated the party crowd to good music and performance.

Joy FM’s Drive Time Show hosted by Bola Ray was also broadcast live from there and DJ Black was on hand to dish out music.

Association of Alcohol Manufacturers and Importers (AAMI) will hold an Emergency Meeting on Thursday, July 24th, 2009. The time will be from 11:30 AM -12:30PM at the Golden Tulip Hotel.
The Meeting would be held at the Faanaa Hut, near the pool. Please endeavour to attend or send your able representative:

AGENDA:

1. Tackling Government’s 5% levy on alcoholic products
2. Alcohol Policy Update
3. Increased Visibility for AAMI activities to make us public friendly
4. Updates on public activities
5. Revised dues for AAMI
6 AOB

Please let us endeavour to attend this emergency meeting!!!

The Association of Alcohol Manufacturers and Importers (AAMI) has learnt with utter dismay Parliament’s speedy and singlehandness in passing a bill to impose a five percent National Stabilization Levy on selected business entities in the country.

While no government can be faulted for wanting to achieve such objectives as technical progress, incentives, education, healthcare and infrastructural development, such objectives must be approached with all the circumspection needed in order not to throw an otherwise staggering economy overboard.

One would have expected consultations with the relevant business groups the levy was going to affect. At least, that was the approach in many Western countries when financial stimulus packages were being arranged.

While waiting for the global financial difficulties to spit its full venom on Ghana, many of the companies targeted have already frozen employment and are frantically cutting back on their overheads. The intended levy is an additional tax however one looks at it. Taxing net profits is a TAX not a favour.

Taxes are supposed to be ploughed back into operations of a company to expand, employ more people and ultimately help expand the income tax net. A direct tax on net profits will ultimately be transferred to consumers.

This is the exact opposite of what is being planned in Western countries where government is stimulating demand (with much difficulty as people are still not consuming) with financial packages rather than exacting money from identifiable businesses.

However, we can understand the dilemma the government faces; how to finance these objectives in an equitable manner using non-discriminatory revenue mobilisation tools. Since no tax is a good tax unless it leaves individuals or companies in the same relative position as it finds them, the government could do one of four things: reduce its own expenditure by leaving the private sector to provide some of the services government intends to undertake( many of the companies targeted do these through some of their social responsibility projects); reduce the number of taxes and fees on business and entrepreneurship; bring down business regulatory requirements and bureaucratic work or enhance an efficient tax regime by widening the tax net without necessarily increasing tax rates.

While the latter remains a challenging task, it seems that an incentivised private sector could deliver on the creation of more skilled jobs and a handsome corporate social responsibility package in the provision of basic social services. One such incentive is for the President not to sign the 5% National Stabilization Levy bill into law, but make an appeal to these businesses to help without influencing them under duress.

To the government’s fiscal team and members of parliament, we respectfully entreat you to do more next time and you may be guided by the words of J.R. Mc Culloch, one of the founders of economics, who said: “The moment you abandon the cardinal principle of exacting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or their property, you are at sea without rudder or compass and there is no amount of injustice and folly you may not commit.”

The Association of Alcohol Manufacturers and Importers (AAMI) has been established by the major producers of alcohol beverages in Ghana, to co-ordinate and direct activities towards the responsible production and use of alcoholic products in Ghana.
Current members include, Accra Brewery Ltd, Baron Distilleries,Cape Trading Ltd., Guinness Ghana Brewery Ltd, Kasapreko Company Ltd., West Coast Beverages, Diageo.
Website: http://ww.aami.org.gh

Sandra B. Cudjoe
Administrative Assistant
Association of Alcohol Manufaturers and Importers
Website: http://www.aami.org.gh
0284638 178