4th Directors’ Week Celebration: Stakeholders Resolve To Champion Good Corporate Governance

The Institute Directors Ghana has called on its stake holders to rally support behind the drafted Directors Bill currently with the ministry of education for consideration to ensure that the bill go through successful passage.

According to Rockson Dogbegah, President of the IOD Ghana, the bill when passed would ensure ethical standards for good corporate practice which would in effect inure to organizational growth and developing.
The President of the IOD Ghana was addressing stakeholders at the 4th IOD Ghana Directors week celebration which was held online. This time, the directors and stakeholders engaged with the legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive.
Rockson Dobgegah who officially opened the director’s week celebration stressed on esthetical and good corporate leadership as a means to attaining the Ghana beyond aid agenda. He observed that due to the lack of a harmonized single guideline for good corporate governance, ethical leadership is lacking such that organizations cannot achieve their full potentials.
He however charged the stakeholders to support the passage of laws that would engender good corporate governance and directors ethical conduct. He also charged stakeholders pay particular attention to board training, board performance appraisal and credible board selection as ways of ensuring good and ethical board performance. He observed that ‘the culture of implementation is lost to the culture of talking’ and this can be attributed to the lack of standards.
According to him the IOD Ghana is poised to look forward into the future with hope as it has initiated with support from stakeholders the call for good and ethical governance.
Minister of State in the Finance Ministry, Charles Adu Boahen who represented the President Nana Akuffo Ado, unscored the need for good corporate governance as a catalyst for national development. He noted that due to lack of good corporate governance, the New Patriotic Party NPP government inherited a deficient financial structure and had to spend some 21 billion cedis to remedy a bad financial sector.
Additionally, he revealed that 4.5 million was also used to protect investors asset management companies, ‘all these monies could have been channeled into some social intervention programmes’ he said.
It is in this light that he assured stakeholders of government support towards ensuring good and ethical leadership.
On his part and also representing the Judiciary, the Member of Parliament and Minister for State Enterprises, Joseph Cudjo expressed worry about how many state enterprises have failed to achieve the intended purposes they were established and yet same enterprises elsewhere are thriving. For him, this makes the call for ethical and good governance a critical one. ‘can you image if the tyres for the cars we drive are manufactured from the Bonsa Tyres manufacturing company’ but he said these are all failed state companies due to bad corporate governance. The public enterprises he said represent half of Ghana’s GDP and therefore needs to ensure that the sector performs well.

It is for this reason that the minister said government has established the public enterprises ministry and the State Enterprises and Governance Authority to ensure that good corporate governance and best practices is achieved. ‘I must admit that we are beginning to see some progress’ he said.
He also encouraged all stakeholders to take the issue of good corporate governance and ethics seriously.
Stakeholders from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Trade Union Congress TUC, the State Enterprises and Governance Authority, the Registrar General Department and the police in their various submissions appreciated the need for good and ethical corporate governance as one that comes at a cost but pays off at the end, therefore the is the need for all stakeholders to ensure good governance. The 4th IOD Ghana Directors week would end on Friday night with an award to sector players who have excelled in their endeavor to ensuring good corporate governance. The week also affords participants to network.