The founding member of the Liberal Party emphasized the significance of running a self-sufficient government in an interview with Nana Otu Darko on CTV’s Dwabr3 Mu on Thursday, February 2, 2023.
According to Mr. Akpaloo, “three things are required for the country to be self-sufficient,” and the government must actively support local agriculture to stop imports of essential goods used in the nation.
“We must stop the importation of poultry and support our poultry industry, farmers with huge amounts. How much chicken do we consume as a country, then we allocate money, invest to the farmers to produce.”
He noted that, as a country, once we are able to project how much needs to be produced for consumption, applying the economies of scale, will make the cost of production cheaper.
“If let’s say we need 100,000 Metric tonnes per annum, we should be able to produce 400,000 metric tonnes per annum. There’s something known as Economies of Scale, in Economics when you’re producing on a large scale, it allows Cost per Unit to be cheaper.
“If we’re able to help the farmers produce the poultry needed, it as a country, it will reduce cost of production per bird, it will make cost of production per bird cheaper. So there would be no need to import chicken from outside.”
Mr Akpaloo noted that contrary to claims that it will make importers of such products lose their source of livelihood, it would not.
“For those saying that, those who deal in the importation of such products will lose their source of livelihood. No they will now buy from the poultry farmers, and then bring it to the market. So the money they change into dollars to import etc, will stop.”
“The same thing applies to rice. We consume a lot of rice, but we import the bulk of it so why don’t we support the local farmers. We can have a perfume rice factory, so after harvesting, we process it into perfume rice, Ghanaians love perfume rice,” he explained.
He stressed that a Liberal Party government will make the country self-sufficient and even extend it to other West African countries.
“In that same way you need to make room so that when you produce on a large scale, you can store them, so you need a storage facility. So you have to make a deliberate and conscious effort to do this. You don’t need to travel outside to get money to do it, you should be able to find money from Ghana here to do”
“Yes we will do it and even more. We’ll do it so we can export to neighbouring West African countries, my target is not the Western world but the West African countries,” Mr Akpaloo stated.
A member of the Alan for President 2024 campaign team, Hopeson Adorye, has indicated that the Trade and Industry Minister; Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, will heed the calls to resign to pursue his ambitions of leading the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2024 general elections only if the economy stabilises.
According to him, Mr Kyerematen has a role to play in ensuring Ghana’s economy is brought back on track.
He said Mr Kyerematen cannot afford to put his ambition ahead of the overall interest of the party going into the next elections.
He said the party, and for that matter the government’s successes will be the vehicle Mr Kyerematen will run on as flagbearer for the 2024 general elections.
He admitted there have been calls from all quarters pushing for the Minister to resign from the government to pursue his dreams of leading the party to break the eight-year political jinx.
“Even last night, I had calls from as far as the Upper East and Upper West Regions seeking answers to why Alan was still part of the government when he is supposed to be campaigning to make his ambitions of leading the party a reality,” he revealed.
“Alan Kyerematen is not resigning now because as a country we are in crisis and all hands are needed on deck,” he explained.
He was quick to add that the trade minister will humbly tender his resignation if the party opens nominations for the position of flagbearer.
Mr Adorye made the revelation in an interview with Nana Otu Darko, the sit-in host of the Ghana Yensom morning on Accra 100.5 FM on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.
“I know many people are worried about Alan’s delays in resigning to pursue his ambitions,” he noted and added “Alan would have to campaign on the successes chalked on the economy that will be bequeathed to him by the current president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin has noted that the government erred in choosing to invest GH25 billion to collapse nine local banks rather than utilizing GH5 billion to save them.
In a recent interview with the legislative press corps, Mr. Bagbin highlighted that “it is the priority of every country to ensure they are in charge of the banking sector,” adding, “So, if we had Ghanaians with banks facing issues, it is incumbent on us to make them successful.”
On Sunday, October 30, 2022, he informed the media, “I think our colleagues in government erred in not seeing it that way.
He said: “They tried and ensured that Ghanaians making it in the sector lost out and instead of using about GH¢5 billion to help the banks to survive, we ended up losing GH¢25 billion, and we have still not been able to sanitise the system and there is still a lot of work to be done.”
Mr Amoabeng, whose bank was also collapsed in the first term of the Akufo-Addo government, told Nana Otu Darko on CTV’s morning show, Dwabre Mu, on Tuesday, 4 October 2022: “I was pained by the collapse of Heritage Bank because it was young.”
“The Bank of Ghana had issued a licence to Heritage Bank and Heritage Bank had not operated for long and, so, unlike UT Bank, it had no bad loans or anything and it was a wholly-owned Ghanaian company that we had to nurture to grow,” he explained.
“Secondly, the owners of Heritage Bank found it fit to appoint a solid board,” he noted, adding: “I mean, the chairman was [Prof] Kwesi Botchwey. When it comes to finance in this country, he is the safest hands you can get; he’s seen it all.”
“As chairman, the board members run the bank, not the owner, so, I don’t know Seidu Agongo – as I told you, I haven’t met him before – but I know Kwesi Botchwey and I know his track record. So, if you have a bank that hasn’t got any baggage, it’s fresh and it’s got a board headed by Kwesi Botchwey, then it means its closure was a worse decision than UT Bank’s,” he further noted.
“As for UT Bank, we owed and they could have bailed [us out] but decided not to bail; that’s an option. That is why I mentioned that Heritage Bank, for example, was collapsed out of sheer wickedness,” he added.
Mr Amoabeng observed that the “unfortunate thing is, the Bank of Ghana is supposed to be independent but I don’t think they were independent with their decision on Heritage Bank because, if they were independent, why do you issue a licence and withdraw it?”
“When you were issuing the licence, didn’t you know the owners and the board?” he asked.
“It means they were told to withdraw the licence,” he deducted.
“And it’s not a fair way but it’s another dangerous path that Ghana has taken,” he regretted, noting: “Every institution has been politicised including even the army.”
“And that is why I am saying that for Heritage Bank, the institution that is supposed to be independent of the government [BoG], even though in principle, issues a licence and then withdraws that licence when the company hasn’t even done anything wrong,” Mr Amoabeng added.
Mr Amoabeng made similar comments a couple of years ago, saying he found it “extremely odd” for the Bank of Ghana to have collapsed Heritage Bank Limited, which had no bad loans on its books and was being run by the “right people” within the industry.
In his view, the revocation of the licence of the Ghanaian-owned bank, whose founder, Mr Seidu Agongo, has always argued was above board, as far as its books were concerned, was not only politically motivated but also “extremely unfair and unfortunate.”
Asked directly by TV3’s Paa Kwesi Asare in an interview on Business Focus: ‘Do you think, as many think, that some of the decision to close down certain banks was politically motivated?’ Mr Amoabeng answered: “A few of them; specifically Heritage Bank.”
“I don’t understand the issue because the Chairman of the Board is Dr Kwesi Botchwey. I have a lot of respect for him when it comes to finance in this country and managing Boards and he will not, in my estimation, ever accept to be Chairman of a bank that is not right and dealing in all sorts of things. I can say that for him,” Mr Amoabeng, whose bank was also among the nine Ghanaian banks that were collapsed in the central bank’s financial clean-up exercise during President Nana Akufo-Addo’s first term of office, noted.
“So,” Mr Amoabeng noted, “I find it extremely odd that a bank – and it had not started doing business for it to have bad loans and all those things – and for you to say that the owner didn’t have what it takes [doesn’t meet the fit-and-proper criterion] or however they put it, I mean the owner doesn’t run the bank, he’s a Ghanaian, he’s got the money, he’s appointed the right people to run the bank for him, so, what is the excuse?”
“I find that extremely, extremely unfair,” Mr Amoabeng asserted, adding: “Maybe I don’t have all the facts, but from where I stand, I find it really unfortunate.”
The Bank of Ghana revoked Heritage Bank’s licence on Friday, 4 January 2019, on the basis that Mr Agongo, the majority shareholder, among other things, used proceeds realised from alleged fraudulent contracts he executed for the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), for which he has been facing prosecution together with former COCOBOD CEO Stephen Opuni, for the past four years.
Announcing the withdrawal of the licence, the Governor of the central bank, Dr Ernest Addison, told journalists – when asked if he did not deem the action as premature, since the COCOBOD case was still in court – that: “The issue of Heritage Bank, I wanted to get into the law with you, I don’t know if I should, but we don’t need the court’s decision to take the decisions that we have taken. We have to be sure of the sources of capital to license a bank; if we have any doubt, if we feel that it’s suspicious, just on the basis of that, we find that that is not acceptable as capital. We don’t need the court to decide for us whether anybody is ‘fit and proper’. Just being involved in a case that involves a criminal procedure makes you not fit and proper”.
However, Mr Agongo responded with a press statement in which he said that the “not fit and proper” tag stamped on him by the central bank was “capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad faith.”
According to Mr Agongo, “In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction,” adding that: “The fact that I have a case pending before the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be determined by the Honourable Court.”
“The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible evidence?” Mr Agongo asked.
Also, the erstwhile Prof Botchwey Board issued a statement on the matter in which it said: “Heritage Bank was by the Bank of Ghana’s own admission, a solvent bank. It never received liquidity support from the Bank of Ghana. Its corporate governance record had never been impugned by the Bank of Ghana. We believe we have been done a grave injustice and a terrible precedent set that does not bode well for the future.”
On Tuesday, 4 October 2022, Mr. Amoabeng, whose bank also failed during the first term of the Akufo-Addo administration, said to Nana Otu Darko on CTV’s morning program, Dwabre Mu, “I was upset by the fall of Heritage Bank since it was young.”
He said, “The Bank of Ghana had awarded a licence to Heritage Bank and Heritage Bank had not been operating for long so, unlike UT Bank, it had no bad loans or anything and it was a wholly-owned Ghanaian firm that we had to foster to expand.
“Secondly, the owners of Heritage Bank found it fit to appoint a solid board”, he noted, adding: “I mean, the chairman was [Prof] Kwesi Botchwey. When it comes to finance in this country, he is the safest hands you can get; he’s seen it all”.
“As chairman, the board members run the bank, not the owner, so, I don’t know Seidu Agongo – as I told you, I haven’t met him before – but I know Kwesi Botchwey and I know his track record.
“So, if you have a bank that hasn’t got any baggage, it’s fresh and it’s got a board headed by Kwesi Botchwey, then it means its closure was a worse decision than UT Bank”, he further noted.
“As for UT Bank, we owed and they could have bailed [us out] but decided not to bail; that’s an option. That is why I mention that Heritage Bank, for example, was collapsed out of sheer wickedness”, he added.
Mr Amoabeng observed that the “unfortunately thing is the Bank of Ghana is supposed to be independent but I don’t think they were independent with their decision on Heritage Bank because, if they were independent, why do you issue a licence and withdraw it”
“When you were issuing the licence, didn’t you know the owners and the board?” he asked.
“It means they were told to withdraw the licence”, he deducted.
“And it’s not a fair way but it’s another dangerous path that Ghana has taken”, he regretted, noting: “Every institution has been politicised including even the army”.
“And that is why I am saying that for Heritage Bank, the institution that is supposed to be independent of the government, even though in principle, issues a licence and then withdraws that licence when the company hasn’t even done anything wrong”, Mr Amoabeng added.
Mr Amoabeng made similar comments a couple of years ago saying he found it “extremely odd” for the Bank of Ghana to have collapsed Heritage Bank Limited, which had no bad loans on its books and was being run by the “right people” within the industry.
In his view, the revocation of the licence of the Ghanaian-owned bank, whose founder, Mr Seidu Agongo, has always argued was above board, as far as its books were concerned, was not only politically motivated but also “extremely unfair and unfortunate”.
Asked directly by TV3’s Paa Kwesi Asare in an interview on Business Focus: ‘Do you think, as many think, that some of the decision to close down certain banks was politically motivated?’ Mr Amoabeng answered: “A few of them; specifically Heritage Bank”.
“I don’t understand the issue because the Chairman of the Board is Dr Kwesi Botchwey. I have a lot of respect for him when it comes to finance in this country and managing Boards and he will not, in my estimation, ever accept to be Chairman of a bank that is not right and dealing in all sorts of things. I can say that for him”, Mr Amoabeng noted.
“So”, Mr Amoabeng noted: “I find it extremely odd that a bank – and it had not started doing business for it to have bad loans and all those things – and for you to say that the owner didn’t have what it takes [doesn’t meet the fit-and-proper criterion] or however they put it, I mean the owner doesn’t run the bank, he’s a Ghanaian, he’s got the money, he’s appointed the right people to run the bank for him, so, what is the excuse?”
“I find that extremely, extremely unfair”, Mr Amoabeng asserted, adding: “Maybe I don’t have all the facts, but from where I stand, I find it really unfortunate”.
The Bank of Ghana revoked Heritage Bank’s licence on Friday, 4 January 2019 on the basis that Mr Agongo, the majority shareholder, among other things, used proceeds realised from alleged fraudulent contracts he executed for the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), for which he has been facing prosecution together with former COCOBOD CEO Stephen Opuni, for the past four years.
Announcing the withdrawal of the licence, the Governor of the central bank, Dr Ernest Addison, told journalists – when asked if he did not deem the action as premature, since the COCOBOD case was still in court – that: “The issue of Heritage Bank, I wanted to get into the law with you, I don’t know if I should, but we don’t need the court’s decision to take the decisions that we have taken.
“We have to be sure of the sources of capital to license a bank; if we have any doubt, if we feel that it’s suspicious, just on the basis of that, we find that that is not acceptable as capital. We don’t need the court to decide for us whether anybody is ‘fit and proper’, just being involved in a case that involves a criminal procedure makes you not fit and proper”.
However, Mr Agongo responded with a press statement in which he said that the “not fit and proper” tag stamped on him by the central bank was “capricious, arrogant, malicious and in bad faith”.
According to Mr Agongo, “In purportedly making the determination, the central bank obviously had little regard for the time-honoured principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction”, adding that: “The fact that I have a case pending before the High Court is a matter of public knowledge but my guilt or innocence is yet to be determined by the Honourable Court”.
“The determination that I am not a fit and proper person to be a significant shareholder of HBL because the central bank suspects the funds are derived from illicit or suspicious contracts with Cocobod is not only calculated to pre-judge the outcome of the criminal proceedings but also violative of the principle of presumption of innocence to which every individual is entitled. Since when has suspicion become a substitute for credible evidence?” Mr Agongo asked.
Also, the erstwhile Prof Botchwey Board issued a statement on the matter in which it said: “Heritage Bank was by the Bank of Ghana’s own admission, a solvent bank. It never received liquidity support from the Bank of Ghana.
“Its corporate governance record had never been impugned by the Bank of Ghana. We believe we have been done a grave injustice and a terrible precedent set that does not bode well for the future”
