politicsghana.com

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced the reopening of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) from Tuesday, September 1, 2020.

This is after a thorough work by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL), Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health.

Akufo-Addo made this known during his 16th televised address to the nation on the measure taken by the government to curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country.

“I am glad to announce that the Kotoka International Airport will resume operations on Tuesday, September 1, 2020. This has been communicated to all international airlines,” he said.

He stated further that every passenger who arrives in the country must possess proof of a negative PCR test. The PCR test may take up to 30 minutes for the result of a test to be known.

Passengers arriving in the country will be required to take the rapid test at the upper arrival section of KIA’s Terminal 3. Passengers are to bear the cost of the COVID-19 test, estimated at between ¢250-¢500.

The test will eliminate the need for arriving passengers to be quarantined in hotels, which has been described as too costly for both the government and individual passengers to bear.

The KIA was closed to international passenger traffic about five months ago as part of the Coronavirus restrictions.

President Akufo-Addo as part of his address said, he is very optimistic that the reopening of the airport will not lead to new infections.

He, then, announced some guidelines to ensure that no case is imported into the country.

The guidelines are:

1. Any passenger arriving in Ghana must be in possession of a negative COVID-19 PCR test result from an accredited laboratory in the country of origin. The test should have been done not more than seventy-two (72) hours before the scheduled departure from the country of origin. All airlines have been instructed to ensure compliance with this directive for all passengers wishing to travel to Ghana, and those airlines who fail in this regard will be duly sanctioned;

2. disembarking passengers must do so wearing face masks;

1. upon disembarking from the aeroplane, each passenger will undergo a mandatory COVID-19 test at the airport terminal, at a fee to be borne by the passenger. The test result will be available within thirty (30) minutes;

2. children under the ages of five (5) will not be required to undergo testing at the airport;

3. passengers, who test positive for COVID-19, will be handled by the health authorities for further clinical assessment and management; and

4. passengers, who test negative, can, thereupon, enter Ghana to go about their lawful activities, and will be advised to continue to observe COVID-19 safety precautions during their stay in Ghana.

Meanwhile, the country’s land and sea borders remain closed.

Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, the Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has argued that one does not have to be an investment banker to fully understand and debate the controversial Agyapa Royalties deal, insisting that suggestions that non-experts in investment banking lack an understanding of the deal is unfounded.

His assertions follow views expressed by Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko and others to the effect that persons such as Bright Simons, who lack expertise in investment banking, cannot be more informed on the soundness of the deal than the experienced investment bankers such as Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, who are overseeing the Agyapa deal.

“In this matter of Agyapa Royalties, they say Bright Simons is not an investment banker. So what? Why is that even part of the discussion?

Investment banking is a career or a job some people choose to do for a living. It is not some exclusive, impenetrable field that persons who do not make a living in it cannot understand or master. Investment bankers come from all manner of backgrounds: engineering, law, math, other hard sciences, economics, the liberal arts, humanities, you name it.

Moreover, the clients for whom investment bankers work are rarely ever themselves masters of investment banking. In fact, investment banking is not even a profession one typically masters or qualifies to enter through formal training or education. In my own experience, I got to understand a great deal more about the intricacies of corporate and capital market transactions as a corporate lawyer than I ever got to understand in graduate business school. Any suggestion, therefore, that a man of Bright Simons’ learning and experience, an investor and entrepreneur to boot, cannot or does not understand this fairly simple Agyapa deal enough to debate its promoters is just ludicrous,” he argued on social media.

The lawyer and governance expert opined that the debate on the Agyapa deal is not even about investment banking but about how Ghanaians can collectively benefit from its mineral resources.

“In any case, one does not need to be an investment banker or be interested in investment banking in order to form or express an intelligent opinion on a transaction involving our sovereign assets. The debate here is not about investment banking. It is about how best to extract and maximize value from our sovereign mineral resources and receipts. It is a debate for Main Street, first and foremost, not one to be outsourced to Wall Street,” he emphasized.

He contends that everyone’s opinion on the matter is important and people must not be dismissed on the basis that they apparently lack expertise.