A delegation from the Republic of Guyana yesterday paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, with a call for closer collaboration to bolster trade between Ghana and Guyana.
The delegation made up of the Ministers of Information, Mr Kwame McCoy and Housing and Water, Mr Collin Croal, is in the country to participate in the 66th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference scheduled to open in Accra today.
Welcoming the team to his office, Mr Oppong Nkrumah expressed his gratitude to the delegation for taking time off their busy schedule to visit him.
He said the similarity relations between the two countries as members of the Commonwealth made it imperative for the two to explore more areas of collaboration.
The minister said even though trade between the two countries had seen some improvement, a lot more could be done in that area to bolster the relationship, stressing that “It is obvious that we need to work up on those ones to ensure that first of all generally, there is more trade into your part of the world largely because of the similarities.”
Touching on information, Mr Oppong Nkrumah noted that a lot was taking place to deepen and sharpen government information management.
He said Ghana had a 100 per cent media freedom which did not allow, not even the Minister of Information, to interfere with editorial decisions of the various media houses, including those of the state.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said as part of measures to deepening information flow to the media and the citizenry, Ghana operated a unique structure under the Right to Information (RTI) Law, Act 989 and this included the deployment of more than 350 RTI officers to public institutions to respond to RTI requests.
He said between 2019 and now, more than 1000 RTI requests had been received and responded to, adding that despite the exemptions it gives, it remains a unique piece of legislature that was helping create a lot more of transparency in the country.
On his part, Mr McCoy said the visit was to explore a lot more of Ghana and to establish ways of collaborations both as counterparts and as sovereign states.
He explained that the structure of Guyana’s information portfolio even though similar to that of Ghana, had some minor differences and would be in readiness to collaborate with Ghana’s Ministry of Information through the establishment of a Memorandum of Understanding.
Mr McCoy noted that even though Guyana was the fastest growing economy in the world, it was still having to deal with the fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of the Russian-Ukraine war.
He said the situation had impacted the cost of living in the country, however, the government had put in place a number of measures to reduce the burden on the citizenry.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
