Ghana Post host workshop on Orders

Accra, Oct 15, GNA - Research indicates that total value of remittance from about 175 million immigrants worldwide in 2005 was estimated at over 230 billion dollars. Such remittances played an important role in financing development effort; enabling families receive the needed capital for education, housing, business start-up and expansion. Mr Benjamin Aggrey Ntim, Minister of Communication said this at a Regional Workshop for the implementation of International Express Money Orders via the International Financial Service (IFS) Network in Accra on Tuesday.

The three-day workshop hosted by the Ghana Post (GP) drew participants from Ghana, France, Nigeria, South Africa and The Gambia and was in line with resolution C47 of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) Bucharest Congress, which emphasises orientation among member countries concerning the development of regional projects, particularly the development of International Money Transfer Services of Postal Organisations.

He said with ICT, that was upsurge in Internet services; email, the corresponding dwindling traditional mail business have influenced the post to go beyond the postal and Money Order business. It had become necessary at this time that money transfer services have become a viable business enterprise and needed to streamline its operations to satisfy it numerous customers and added that remittance flow could strengthen systems in developing countries and reduce risk of it been diverted for illicit purpose, or lost completely. For this reason, he said, government was facilitating ICT enabled services by laying optic fibre around the country for companies and businesses such as the Ghana Post to hook unto the information super highway.

Ghana Post (GP) financial Service he said accounted for 11.5 percent of their total revenue and announced that government was supporting GP with the construction and rehabilitation of ICT based post Offices, adding that presently 59 of such post offices have been developed with more to be undertaken.

"With domestic and international Money Transfer already established in many countries this workshop should provide you the opportunity to improve on your data collection on remittance flow and to develop standards for data collection in both sending and receiving countries", he told the participants.

He called for the reduction in cost of sending remittances, which sometimes was beneficial for the sender to transact such business because it was costly and prohibitive and ensure that fraud associated with the operation of the service was completely eliminated. The Communication Minister noted that the Electronic Transaction Bill would soon be enacted to establish a legal platform to discourage cyber crimes.

Professor Addo Fenning, Board Chairman, Ghana Post (GP) said conservatism has caused Postal Administration in Africa to lose much ground to its competitors and has resulted in low returns on the sale of traditional Postal Orders, adding that the use of ICT has become necessary to improve its work.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) he said deserved commendation on its decision to use the IFS network to facilitate financial services business and express the hope that the workshop would prove itself equal to the challenge of the assignment and come up with recommendations that would help improve the money transfer business and boast the economic fortunes of the country.

Mr Kofi Dua-Adonteng, Managing Director of Ghana Post noted that the IFS of the UPU provided a framework for postal Administration to join hands in a businesslike manner to provide the services to meet the growing demand of customers.

"We should take this workshop as our baptism for IFS through which the Electronic Money Order service would be implemented between and among Postal Administrations. The future of Ghana Post is inextricably linked with the financial services and w e must see it as such," he said. 16 Oct. 07