Ghanaian presidents must stop appointing chief executives of State-Owned Enterprises

He explained that with the current trend where the president appoints heads for such SOEs there is a decline in performance and contribution towards GDP over the years.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, he suggested that the government should rather allow the boards of such entities to appoint the Chief Executives.

“In some cases, they even think that they are more powerful than the board because the appointment did not come from the board and so in terms of performance, they don’t see themselves as having to report to the board and so right from there we lose the fight of good performance and of effective leadership.”

“So what happens is that there will not be good performance and controls will not be effective, because in this case whiles even instructing the Chief Executive to do something he doesn’t see you as somebody he reports to and then at the end of the day the whole organization loses trust,” he added.

He also said that the boards both in government and private institutions must demand accountability from the management of various companies.

“It is high time boards demand accountability from the CEOs so that at all times they give out their best”

His comment is coming after President Akufo-Addo announced plans to implement a robust regime to monitor the activities of state-owned enterprises to ensure transparency and accountability.

He further announced that the government had begun the implementation of a Credit Risk Assessment Framework to determine the ability of SOEs to honour their debt obligations.

But most leaders from various sectors of the economy believe that the management of SOEs will be better if their respective CEOs are appointed by their boards instead of the president.