Joseph Cudjoe, Public Enterprises Minister-designate Chairman of the Appointments Committee of Parliament Joseph Osei Owusu, on Tuesday suggested to Mr Joseph Cudjoe, Public Enterprises Minister-designate, to focus on entities set up as businesses with state interest.
Mr Cudjoe, MP for Efia, was nominated by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo , to head the newly created Ministry, at the beginning of the second term of his Administration.
Appearing on Tuesday before the Committee at the Parliament House, in Osu-Accra, Mr Cudjoe justified the creation of the Ministry, which he said charted a new path in the supervision of state enterprises to operate more profitably.
Mr Cudjoe replied in the affirmative to a question from Mr Frank Annoh-Dompreh, MP for Nsawam Adoagyiri and Member of the Committee, if he saw the creation of the Ministry as charting a new path in the supervision of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
“Yes very much so, because the problems are clear. State enterprises are running at losses. They’re highly indebted, there’s fragmented oversight,” the Minister-designate said.
He added: “And this is the first time the President has had a vision of focusing on their performance and making sure that they do not continue to be a drain on the public purse. So before and after, I think we’re on a new path.”
The creation of the Ministry is based on the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA) Act, 2019 (Act 990) which the Parliament of Ghana passed in April 2019, and assented to by President Akufo-Addo in June of that same year.
Thereafter, President Akufo-Addo launched the State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA) to replace the Divestiture Implementation Committee and the State Enterprises Commission.
Among other things, the SIGA was to neutralise the role played by the Ministry of Finance in state-owned enterprises and joint venture companies.
The authority has an additional mandate to streamline aspects of the operations of the entities it replaces, develop a code of corporate guidelines to promote sound governance for institutional performance and inject in them some private sector practices to make them profitable.
At his vetting, the Minister-designate for State Enterprises named the Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) as a company which model was worthy of emulation, as it took the third position of Ghana Club 100 on the list of high performing companies in Ghana.Mr Cudjoe accepted that he had a right to challenge the Bank of Ghana which named Daily Capital Micro Finance, for which he was Executive […]