The National President of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana (CIMG), Dr Daniel Kasser Tee, has said acceptance of the proposed Debt Exchange Programme was the only way forward for investors of the affected government’s debt securities if they wanted to eventually get their monies.
“If we refuse to participate, government will simply default on its repayments under the original terms, and unfortunately there is very little we can do about it,” he added.
Dr Tee was speaking at the 32nd CIMG President’s Ball held in Accra over the weekend on the theme “Creative Marketing and Innovation in a Volatile Global Economy”.
The event also saw the induction of 27 new members into the Institute, a recognition and certification ceremony.
Dr Tee indicated that with the new restructuring proposals, investors would know what to expect with regards to how much they would get and when they would get it.
He, therefore, urged all to calm down and allow pension fund managers to handle “this on our behalf. It is a complex financial issue that cannot be discussed and won on radio.”
Dr Tee also called on the government to effectively communicate with Ghanaians by carrying them along in its activities, adding that “the implications may be dire but it is the duty of the government to explain to us all policies, whether their impact on us is negative or positive”.
He used the opportunity to urge marketers to propose less risky and less costly ways of pursuing market penetration, as well as market and product development strategies.
“We must emphasise on value creation from our knowledge of buyer behaviour and also take advantage of effective target marketing,” he added.
Dr Tee urged the marketers to look beyond the country in terms of market expansion by considering the wide range of advantages available for doing cross border trade within Africa on the back of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
He said that was because the Ghana National Coordinating Office (NACO) of the AfCFTA secretariat was engaging stakeholders in the business community across all 16 regions of the country to discuss, among other things, available trade opportunities.
The CIMG National President further urged members to make the provision of IT-based solutions number one as the internet remained the single most important and most cost-effective way to reach and interact with other markets.
Speaking on behalf of the Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, his deputy, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, noted that customer sophistication had been on the high in the past 10 years, for which it had become exceedingly important for technology to be leveraged to meet customer needs.
He urged that marketing education be taken seriously and ensured that marketing was brought to the forefront of every organisation, knowing that marketing drove turnovers.
Dr Adutwum, therefore, congratulated the CIMG and the inductees and encouraged them to continue to do more for the discipline to impact the country positively.
BY ABIGAIL ARTHUR
