PANA To Go Private

Accra, - 9 June The Pan African News Agency (PANA) is to go private but before that, it seeks to recover part of the 31 million-dollar debt owed it by African nations, Mr Babacar Fall, Coordinator General of PANA, said today. He said PANA currently owes 4.1 million dollars and needs to settle it before making a fresh start. Mr Fall was paying a courtesy call on Mr John Mahama, Deputy Minister of Communications in Accra. He said the Agency's privitalization plan would keep the Africanness in its products and spread its ownership to the entire continent. ''Twenty-five per cent of our shares would go directly to African News Agencies with the remaining going to African companies, newspapers, radio stations and other interests. ''This would demonstrate to all that under no circumstance shall we depart from what PANA was created to do - disseminate information from the African prespective." Mr Fall said a final decision on the future of PANA would be taken at the conference of African Information Ministers slated for next month in Cairo. He said consensus would be reached on the settlement of its debts adding ''obviously we cannot recover all but hope to redeem some.'' ''My presence at the OAU (in Harrare) was very helpful, at least it prepared some minds for our programme.'' Mr Fall said the recovery programme saw the Agency reaping results in both its editorial and management fronts. Before the programme, he said, PANA was circulating 2,000 words to eight African countries only but now it circulates 40,000 words to 48 African countries and a number of foreign companies. ''Hitherto, we were spending 120,000 dollars a year on salaries but now we have a very efficient and manageable staff who (take away) 55,000 dollars annually''.