Cabinet Decides STC’s Fate

Cabinet is set to consider a proposal by the Transport Ministry for government to completely divest its interest in Intercity STC.

This comes after the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), which owns 80 per cent of the company decided to offload its shares.

SSNIT is walking away citing what appears to be the abysmal performance of the transport company over the years.

“We are no more interested in STC, and I’ll say the agreement that established the shares said if we want to offload, the first option goes to the government of Ghana. And since we are no more interested, we’ve written to them that we are no more interested so we want to offload our shares. So if they are interested we wouldn’t mind they repaying the money by installment and we are awaiting their response,” Corporate Affairs Director of SSNIT, Eva Amegashie told Joy FM’s Hotline.

“If you have a flagship and then suddenly it becomes so notorious that you wouldn’t be so interested in…and you know this is public money and we have to make sure that we get enough funds so that when people are due to collect their benefits we can pay them.”

Transport Minister Collins Dauda is due to advice Cabinet on the matter but he tells Joy News he’ll suggest government does not continue running STC.

“One thing that must be very clear is that in making my recommendation to Cabinet I’ll not recommend to government that it should continue to run STC. I’ll certainly not. I’ll ask for private sector participation in the management of STC because several companies run transport businesses in Ghana…and they are doing very well. So one wonders why the government one is not performing,” Mr Dauda said.

“Anything owned by government lacks supervision and in doing business, if your ability to supervise is not good enough you better don’t venture. If you find that the private sector is better placed to do it get the private sector to do it for you.

“This ministry has a history; we used to have Ghana Airways, where is it? We used to have Black Star Line, where is it? STC is the next on line. Railway is gone. And you know the attitude of Ghanaians towards state-owned businesses.”

Mr. Dauda did not indicate when Cabinet will decide on the fate of the company but SSNIT is prepared to sell the share off to a new company should government decline to purchase them.

Meanwhile, former Managing Director of Intercity STC and now Executive Director of the National Road Safety Commission, Noble Appiah, said Intercity STC will not get any better until the right business strategies are adopted.

“When I was there, OSA and City Express, would rather come to us for advice but today it’s rather the opposite. It’s a shame but it’s all not lost,” he said.

“I still believe in the strategy, get the right strategy in place, get the right people in place, develop new products, new services and then look at the market what is happening, what areas they can concentrate on and they can come back.”