President John Dramani Mahama has announced that 10 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been prepared for listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) as part of measures to strengthen corporate governance and limit political interference in their operations.
According to President Mahama, the proposed listings will also allow members of the public, including Ghanaians living abroad, to acquire shares in the selected state-owned companies.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, he said the move was driven by the need to change the way state enterprises are managed and improve their financial performance.
President Mahama criticised a culture where some employees of loss-making state companies continue to receive salaries and demand bonuses and salary increases despite poor financial performance.
“There’s this notion of state enterprises where people just go and they’re guaranteed a monthly salary, whether they perform well, they don’t, even when they’re making losses, they’re asking for salary increments and asking for bonuses when you’ve made a loss,” he said.
He said government’s efforts to improve the performance of SOEs had already produced positive results, with the companies collectively moving from losses to recording significant profits.
“But we managed to turn around the story. Collectively, they made a loss, but last year, I think we just held the State Interest and Governance Authority programme, and they have made a net profit of almost 19 billion cedis,” he said.
The President said the reported turnaround demonstrates progress in the reform of state-owned enterprises but stressed the need for additional measures to ensure stronger and more sustainable governance.
He explained that listing the companies on the stock exchange would help reduce direct government control over their boards and management.
“So they’ll become publicly listed companies, one, because we want to improve their governance, and two, because we want to reduce political interference in those state-owned enterprises,” President Mahama said.
He argued that greater private and public ownership would make it more difficult for successive governments to arbitrarily dissolve boards or remove management whenever there is a change in administration.
“If we list more of these companies, it makes it difficult for government to interfere and sack the management and dissolve the boards and all that,” he said.
Beyond governance reforms, President Mahama said the listings would provide Ghanaians, including those in the diaspora, with an opportunity to invest directly in state-owned businesses through the Ghana Stock Exchange.
He described the GSE as an important platform for mobilising domestic and diaspora investment, citing its recent performance and the completion of three initial public offerings within a relatively short period.
“The Ghana Stock Exchange was the best performing in Africa, you know, last year, and it’s bounced back. We did three IPOs in record time,” he said.
The proposed listings form part of the government’s broader efforts to reform state-owned enterprises, improve accountability and create a more commercially oriented framework for their operations.
