In an effort to increase pension scheme returns, the Ghanaian government has recently created a 3 tier pension system. In this system tier 1 is still managed by the government, but tiers 2 and 3 are now privately managed in the hope that this will increase returns for the pensioners. FSL has managed to secure many of these funds and control them with the benchmark of earning 1% above the 91-day T-Bill at the time of purchase.
Songor Salt Project (SSP) is a salt mining company based in Ada, 2 hours outside of Accra owned and controlled by the government. Fidelity Securities Limited (FSL) manages the pension fund of SSP.
I was very curious to see this plant and was not entirely prepared for what I found. On arrival, we were handed off to many different people and lead to multiple locations before settling in to what I'm assuming was the boardroom. The boardroom was an interesting affair with pealing paint covered in the red dust that permeates throughout much of rural Ghana. The long wooden table in the center of the room was in a sorry state, covered in graffiti and half finished sums. It was very reminiscent of a high school common room, perhaps accentuated by the worn-out blackboard at one end of the room. The chairs around the table were even worse with many of the backs missing.
Although having been requested to be on time, Nii, Comfort and I must have waited close to an hour for the relevant members of the company to be present. The company does not have internet access so seemed to rely on word of mouth and the occasional telephone conversation for organization.
The meeting started off with a prayer. Then, began in an almost hyper formal manner which contrasted greatly with the sweaty, disorganized band that had taken so long to gather for our presentation. We went through an agenda slowly since there were many people not very familiar with finance present. The points that were raised by the companies representatives all seemed to focus around each person at that table receiving as much money as possible from the pension scheme. They did not seem to grasp fully how risk-adverse pension funds are supposed to be. They clamored for a performance based model not understanding that if pension fund managers are motivated by a slice of the profits, they will be more likely to take risks thus reducing the security of the pension fund as a whole.
Therefore, having answered the same question in multiple forms multiple times, the time began approaching 1:30pm and with it, the most obvious give-away that these men were government workers. Although we were in the middle of the meeting, many of the men said simply that "it's friday, time to go home." There was no concept of working to finish the task and then return home. Therefore, we were unable to finish our presentation and have been asked to return next week.
In recompense though, we were given a very interesting tour of the saltworks. Pictures will soon follow.
Some interesting facts/turns of phrase from the meeting:
Due to having no internet connection, salary data must be given to Fidelity Bank using a pen-drive every month.
(to be updated this afternoon with full list.)
Article on SSP: http://www.dailyguideghana.com/?p=890
No comments:
Post a Comment