Mr Isaac Yaw Opoku, a Member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has commended the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) for its strong operational and financial position.
Mr Opoku, a member of Parliament for Offinso South Constituency, made the commendation when he led the review of GIFEC’s statement of operations and financial position in Accra. He observed that GIFEC posted an impressive 7.2 per cent increase in surplus of income over expenditure, compared to the previous year, significantly improving its liquidity, as a result.
“GIFEC’s financial position is very good. Non-current assets increased by 14.5 per cent, and current assets by 20.1 per cent. Their liquidity position is very strong and (has) even improved over the previous year. In fact, they did well and needed to be commended.”
Mr Isaac Yaw Opoku
Mr. Prince Ofosu Sefah, Administrator of GIFEC, highlighted the progress of the Ghana Rural Telephony and Digital Inclusion Project (GRT&DIP), GIFEC’s flagship project saying “it was unprecedented in nature, as began in late 2020”.
The Administrator of GIFEC mentioned that 473 out of the 1,008 (50 per cent of the planned 2,016 Rural Mobile Sites being deployed by the Project) are completed and are active and delivering voice and data services to citizens.
Mr. Prince Ofosu Sefah assured the Committee that plans are far advanced and efforts are being expedited to resolve all technical difficulties being encountered, to ensure that the remaining sites were all built and activated this year. He said the equipment for the construction of the remaining 50 per cent of the 2,016 sites is already in the country, awaiting funding for deployment, which is expected to take place soon.
Implementation of Projects
The GRT&DIP forms part of GIFEC’s flagship Rural Telephony Programme, which is funded by the Government of Ghana (GoG), through a strategic agreement with Huawei and China National Technical Import & Export Corporation (CNTIC), funded by the China EXIM Bank to establish 2,016 Rural Telephony Sites in as many communities across the country, envisioned to provide mobile network coverage to about 3.4 million more citizens.
GIFEC supervises the implementation of this Project, working with Technical Partners, on behalf of the Government of Ghana, represented by the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation (MoCD). This unprecedented Project has been spearheaded by the Honourable Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, who also chairs the Board of Trustees of GIFEC, positions she has held since 2017.
The Administrator (CEO), moreover, iterated that 200 ICT labs will be established this year, as part of its Cyberlabs Programme. He showed that equipment will soon be deployed to the new CICs for their operationalisation, and reiterated the need to establish Municipal/District multi-stakeholder Management Committees to manage and maintain the ICT centres, to continue to benefit the people of the community.
Mr. Prince Ofosu Sefah also mentioned that some of the CICs will facilitate the training of over 10,000 citizens this year, as part of GIFEC’s ICT Capacity Building and Skills Development Programme. He admonished the communities to develop a solid maintenance culture, supported by a similarly improving culture at GIFEC, to ensure the people continue to benefit from these resources for a longer time.
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