Good corporate governance is gradually becoming a scarce commodity in both the public and private sectors.
It is a fact that good corporate governance helps in reducing or minimizing the incidence of business failure in all economies.
Corporate governance issues have however arisen in many facets of the Ghanaian economy – banking and finance, judiciary, government, football administration and construction among others in recent years.
The Institute of Directors-Ghana (IoD-GH) supports the efforts made by the Bank of Ghana to sanitize the banking sector as a result of the struggling state of the five banks – Unibank, Beige Bank, Sovereign Bank, Royal Bank, and the Construction Bank. We encourage depositors and shareholders of the affected banks to stay calm as the Bank of Ghana puts in measures to secure their investments. We also call on all other sectors of the economy to enhance their corporate governance and leadership culture.
In this regard and with respect to our vision to become the leading reference point for directorship and best practices in corporate governance, the IoD-GH is ready to support the new bank – Consolidated Bank Limited – and other institutions to enhance their corporate governance culture to promote sound growth.
As part of the vision of the new leadership of the IoD-GH to “reposition the Institute as a more vibrant, responsible and effective corporate governance professional body which is responding to the needs of its members and the society, in a sustainable and efficient manner, the institute shall pursue the following key projects:
- Lead an advocacy to ensure the mandatory training of directors of both public and private sector institutions in corporate governance.
- Create the Ghana Corporate Governance Forum, a public private dialogue (PPD) platform to encourage interactions that would lead to the strengthening of corporate governance and promote accountability and compliance to laws and regulation of the state;
- Advocate for Board Positions on Corporate Boards for members of the Institute;
- Make IoD-GH accessible in all the Regions in the country by establishing regional chapters;
- Develop a corporate governance index to measure the strength of corporate governance practices in Ghana periodically for purposes of corporate government management;
- Implement the IoD-GH award scheme to promote good corporate governance across corporations;
- Lead a process to incorporate corporate governance studies in Ghanaian educational curricula at various levels of education;
- Enhance business development through continuous training and development of Directors of corporations;
We shall draw heavily on our Code of Ethics Clause 1.2 Sub Section 11, which states “the awareness and acceptance of the fact that in today’s competitive world, there is the need to be proactive, be a critical thinker, problem solver, and have some good communication skills as well as good sense of judgement in order to succeed”.
This statement will be our guiding principle and we call on corporate bodies, public institutions, individuals and the Ghanaian society to support us deliver this mega transformational agenda.
Signed: Rockson Dogbegah
President, Institute of Directors, Ghana
