Channel Government Postal Business To Us – Ghana Post MD, Bice Osei Kuffour Pleads
Managing Director (MD) of Ghana Post Company Limited, Bice Osei Kuffour, has made a passionate appeal to government to come up with some policy arrangement as a matter of priority, to channel state postal business to Ghana Post as pertains in other jurisdictions.
He made this appeal at the Jubilee House today 19 May 2022 when he together with the Board Chairman of Ghana Post, led a delegation to pay a courtesy call on the President.
Bice Osei Kuffour, also known as Obour, in his submissions to President Akufo-Addo indicated, “We have studied post services and post administrations around the world. We have studied the one of Kenya, the one of Egypt, the one of Japan”.
He explained, “Because of the transformation and digitization era, every organization goes through a certain change. Postal services is also going through the changes but it needs a certain core business, a certain base to thrive on the base so that it can propel its growth”.
“In some of these administrations (which the Ghana Post has studied), the base has been achieved through getting business from government. If we look at our books, the portion of government business that Ghana post receives in monthly constitutes just about 3% of our total revenue,” the Ghana Post MD said.
A case for state business
To demonstrate the low nature of direct government business to Ghana Post, Mr Osei Kuffour noted, “In Kenya, they (Kenya Postal Services) receive 45% of their revenue from government business. In Lebanon, they receive 55% of their revenue from government business. In Japan, they receive 80% of the revenue from government business. Currently we are running 360 post offices, out of which 330 are extremely active, but out of these 330, it is only 94 that are profit making.”
“It is our major plea that a government policy direction can come to our aid so that the Post Office can continue servicing itself, paying its staff and not rely on begging government for capital injection,” Osei Kuffour stated.
Legacy debts
Turning his attention to what he says are ‘legacy debts’ which are posing a great challenge to the liquidity of Ghana Post, Mr Osei Kuffour, made an equally passionate appeal to President Akufo-Addo to persuade the government agencies the Ghana Post owes to find a way to lift the pressure off them to improve their spending capacity as an organization.
“We have some legacy debts. It is in the region of GHc40 million Ghana cedis. Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) portion is about GHc 8 million, SSNIT is about GHc 5 million, then there is end of service benefits owed old staff from 2016 up until 2021. We are unable to pay staff who go on pension because the organization does not have the liquidity to handle it and it is still hanging on our books. If we get business, we will be able to pay this ourselves,” the Ghana Post MD said.
“In the interim, what we are pleading for is if there could be a consideration to transform some of these debts to same government entities as additional equity or we find another way to capture it, so that we can be a little liquid,” he added.
Feasible proposal
President Akufo-Addo, in his response to the requests put forth by the Ghana Post boss noted that the consolidation of government business to Ghana Post was a welcomed idea.
He indicated that the Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu Ekuful, under whose sector, Ghana Post falls directly, being present at the meeting, knows what to do to bring the request before government for consideration and necessary action.
“I am not at all surprised about the changes that are taking place there (Ghana Post) and also the trajectory of your thinking. The consolidation of government business to Ghana Post is something that is clearly feasible and the Minister is the main representative of the shareholder, I think she knows what to do to bring this matter up for consideration,” President Akufo-Addo said.
“I wouldn’t like to go further than that but to leave it to her to take the steps that would enable government to consider this. It makes sense to me that instead of government paying private sector operators to do this necessary business, that it should pay a public sector agency which it owns and controls to do the same business if the capacity is there,” the President added.
Wilberforce Asare
