The survey further showed that 48 percent of CEOs are optimistic about their respective companies’ revenue growth in the same year.

According to the report, while 70 percent of Ghanaian CEOs believe the national economy will expand in 2025, a significantly smaller proportion—48 percent—are equally confident in their own companies’ revenue prospects.

“More instructive is the finding that Ghana’s CEOs are less pessimistic about their businesses’ short-term prospects than when we posed that question to them just 12 months earlier—65% of Ghana’s CEOs at that time were very confident or extremely confident about their company’s 2024 revenue prospects,” the report noted.

The report surveyed 4,701 CEOs across 109 countries and territories, including Ghana, between October 1 and November 8, 2024.

While the global and regional figures were weighted in proportion to each country’s nominal GDP for representativeness, PwC indicated that “Ghana’s data is based on unweighted data from the sample.”

In his foreword, Country Senior Partner at PwC Ghana, Vish Ashiagbor, explained that the survey offers a window into the minds of CEOs, revealing what keeps them awake at night as well as what fuels their hope.

“With more CEOs in Ghana participating in the survey compared to last year, we trust that the sentiments expressed in the results are representative of the points of view of the CEO community in general,” he stated.

He highlighted that the key concerns among Ghanaian CEOs include economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, artificial intelligence (AI)/Generative AI, and climate change.

Ashiagbor further explained that CEOs are facing a mix of short-term shocks and long-term disruptions whose effects, though gradual, could have significant implications for businesses and their customers.

“What the findings from the survey confirm is that shocks do not only throw up challenges—they produce opportunities too. And CEOs see these opportunities. However, not all businesses are agile enough to pivot and take advantage of the opportunities that arise in the wake of these shocks,” he noted.

He cautioned CEOs not to become complacent about recent economic improvements, such as the relative stabilization of the cedi and a drop in inflation.

“Our suspicion is that this optimism might have led more CEOs in Ghana to believe their businesses would survive the next decade without the need to reinvent their business models. If true, this could be fatal for most CEOs,” Ashiagbor warned.

Source: Lawrence Segbefia

Though it supports government’s decision to freeze employment in the public sector, it said in its 2023 Budget review that key sectors such as education and health should be given key consideration and should not be hampered by the freeze on public sector employment.

The 2023 Budget highlighted some key interventions with respect to payroll and human resource management.

These included, among others, the freeze on all public sector employment, expunging ghost names from payroll through periodic audits, linking the Ghana card to the payroll, placing moratorium on granting of extension of employment after retirement and completing the roll-out of HRMIS and its integration to the payroll and GIFMIS.

PwC said “as negotiations with the IMF are currently ongoing, this is a critical area of reforms that need to be undertaken to cut down expenditure.

“However, whilst we agree with the Government on these measures, key sectors such as education and health should be given key consideration and should not be hampered by the freeze on public sector employment”.

The government also proposed key expenditure measures in the 2023 Budget to support its fiscal consolidation.

These include the reduction of the earmarked funds from the current 25% of tax revenue to 17.5% of tax revenue, continued action of the 30% reduction of salaries of the President, Vice President, Ministers, Deputy Ministers and other political office holders, negotiate public sector wages, manage public sector hiring within current budgetary constraints, reduce fuel allocations to political appointees and heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies; Metropolitan, Municipal, Department and State Owned Enterprises by 50%, among others.

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It said there is a need to downsize government machinery in addition to the implementation of the measures outlined to achieve a more sustainable outcome.

“While these measures may lead to expenditure reduction, we believe that there is the need to downsize Government machinery in addition to the implementation of the measures outlined, to achieve a more sustainable outcome.”

According to him, claims by SEC that it is unable to pay monies due to customers of the 53 investments firms due to ongoing legal tussle between it and some fund managers as well as ‘limited’ access granted it to audit documents of customers of fund managers, are unnecessary excuses.

He was of the view that SEC is hiding behind such claims to avoid payments because the government doesn’t have the money to pay customers of the collapsed firms.

Speaking exclusively in an interview on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem morning show on Monday, Mr Nyamah said SEC in the early part of the year contracted Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) to conduct a forensic audit of all documents of the collapsed firms and so does not understand SEC’s assertion that it did not have full access to documents of customers.

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Addressing the issue of claim validation, he noted that SEC as at June 2020, said it had validated 50 per cent of the 90,000 filed claims valued at Ghs 9.9 billion and that it would in the coming few months validate all remaining claims.

“This was in June, and in their (SEC) press release they stated that they had validated only 50,000 of the now over 98,000 claims valued at Ghs 10.3 billion,” he stated.

“SEC just doesn’t want to pay monies due customers and is using particularly the suit against it by Gold Coast Fund Managers now Blackshield Fund Management Ghana to avoid payments because, customers of the firm form 82 per cent of SEC’s validated claims,” he added.