Stephen Asamoah Boateng, the director-general of the State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA) says no state-owned enterprise (SOE) paid a dividend to the government at the end of 2020.
The Authority has attributed the situation to the negative effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking with Asaase Business, Asamoah Boateng said, “Dividend payment for the last year has been difficult. You remember the president even gave payroll support to about eight SOEs…We did project in the previous year [2020] to the government that the dividend payment from the SOEs would be coming in to the tune of about GHC240 million in the year…but it never materialised because of COVID-19. But at least they didn’t shut down which was a plus and didn’t even send workers home…”
He added, “So I can understand if they didn’t pay dividend, but this year I’m expecting them[SOEs) to move…”
Listen to Asamoah Boateng in the audio below:
In July last year, Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister for Finance said about 19 out of the 28 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) weree projecting losses of up to GHC1.55 billion for the year (2020).
Presenting the mid-year Budget Review in Parliament on Thursday (23 July 2020), Ofori-Atta said that “COVID-19 has also led to disruption in corporate and general business confidence, with threats to projected revenues, profitability, liquidity and corporate growth”.
He told MPs, “So far 19 out of the 28 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are projecting losses up to GHC1.55 billion for 2020. Collectively, 1,531 job losses were recorded between April to June 2020 from eight companies within the ceramics, timber, food and agro-processing industries in the manufacturing sub-sector.”
SIGA
In August 2019, President Akufo-Addo outdoored the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA) to replace the then Divestiture Implementation Committee and the State Enterprises Commission.
SIGA was tasked with the responsibility of overseeing state-owned businesses and transforming them into profit-making entities.
It was also charged with complementing 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 replaced, 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.
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