The State Enterprises Commission (SEC) has started a process to recapitalise all state organisations to make them viable, competitive and effective to deliver on their mandate for improved quality services.
All state enterprises, including media organisations are, therefore, required to make proposals of their requirements and indicate how they would manage their debt portfolios for consideration by the Commission.
The SEC Chairman, Mr Stephen Asamoah Boateng, who said this, on Wednesday, at the relaunch of the New Times Corporation’s Newspaper – “The Ghanaian Times”, explained that the Finance Ministry was happy about the initiative to uplift many of the state enterprises, which had been struggling to stay in business.
The Ministry of Finance has requested for a proposal for the “stimulus package,” he stated, “You have to also give me a proposal on how you intend to deal with your debt portfolio, which has been in your books over the years.”
A Deputy Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who unveiled the new logo and masterhead of the new paper, said the recapitalisation of the state organisations would be factored into the “next budget cycle”.
He emphasised that the call for recapitalisation of state institutions was being attended to and ensure they were repositioned to perform their responsibilities.
He urged the media to focus their reportage a lot more on facts and avoid embellishment and over sensationalisation of issues, which he said did not augur well for nation building.
The SEC was established to oversee and coordinate activities of State-owned Enterprises to ensure that their targets were met.
At present the Government holds varying equity interests in about 84 companies, comprising 44 wholly-owned SOEs and 40 Joint Venture Companies.
According to official information sourced from the SEC, many of these companies had been underperforming compared to their own objectives, while others were incurring losses.
Additionally, it said the expected returns to Government from the SOEs and JVCs had not been commensurate with the level of investments that had been channeled into them.
Majority of these public enterprises, however, the Commission said were operating in critical sectors of the economy and were important to the management of public finances and public policy more broadly.
