Graphic takes its turn at PAC

The Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), Mr Ken Ashigbey, has described the company as a profitable home-grown media outlet that has the capacity to compete with major global printing houses.

He said the company had experienced “a dramatic change” since it installed a new K. B. Comet Press, one of five in Africa, that had the capacity to print quality 72,000 impressions in an hour.

“We have been able to build this profitable institution that can print quality newspapers, textbooks and other printing materials comparable to those done in Far Eastern countries, including China,” he stated.

Answering questions at the sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament yesterday, Mr Ashigbey said, “We have achieved this success due to the borrowing of a $10-million loan which we finished paying in 2013 with our own internally generated funds.”

That was after the Chairman of the committee, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, had asked about the company’s decision to acquire a dollar-denominated loan for the purchase of its new press.  

Mr Ashigbey  was assisted in answering queries from the members of the committee by the Director of Finance of the company, Mr K. Baah-Adade.

The GCGL was among three state institutions under the Ministry of Information which appeared before the committee. The others were the Ghana News Agency (GNA) and the Ghana Publishing Corporation.

Also appearing before the committee was the National Media Commission (NMC).

Loan for new press

Mr Ashigbey said the group needed to purchase the new press machines to sustain its dominance in the media industry.

To accomplish that, he explained, the management secured GHc3.5 million and $7 million loans from the Stanbic Bank and Ecobank Ghana Limited at favourable bank bases of 4.5 per cent and three per cent, respectively.

“Immediately we secured the five-year loan, the facility was redenominated in Ghana cedis at GHc1.22 to US$1 and we paid for the machines in cedis,” he told the committee.

 Mr Ashigbey added that today GCGL printed five newspaper brands that were well known and did other private jobs as well, adding, ‘We have excess capacity to print all the newspapers,  as well as textbooks and other materials in Ghana’.

The MD said Graphic was a profitable outfit that had consistently paid dividends to the government.

Profit     

“The group also made profit after tax of GH¢2.5 million in 2008 and GH¢1.4 million in 2009,” he added.

That assertion was supported by Mr Baah-Adade, who told the committee that the company paid GH¢600,000 dividend to the government in 2008; GH¢400,000 in 2009; GH¢500,000 in 2011 and GH¢500,000 in 2012.

He said the GCGL made a turnover of GH¢25.8 million in 2009; GH¢27.5 million in 2010; GH¢30.2 million in 2011 and GH¢41.8 million in 2012.