{"id":674097,"date":"2019-08-07T06:32:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T06:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"<br><div>\n<p>The Chief Executive Officer of Produce Buying Company (PBC), Kofi Owusu Boateng, has outlined some of the crippling financial constraints that have culminated in a protest by workers of the company.<\/p>\n<p>Among other things, Mr. Boateng said"},"modified":"2019-08-07T06:32:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T06:32:17","slug":"pbc-has-ghc185m-locked-up-in-savings-loans-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/08\/07\/pbc-has-ghc185m-locked-up-in-savings-loans-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"PBC has GHc185m locked up in savings &#038; loans firms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Chief Executive Officer of Produce Buying Company (PBC), Kofi Owusu Boateng, has outlined some of the crippling financial constraints that have culminated in a protest by workers of the company.<\/p>\n<p>Among other things, Mr. Boateng said the company has \u201cabout GHc185 million\u201d locked up in savings and loans companies.<\/p>\n<p>On <strong>Eyewitness News<\/strong>, he confessed that this was \u201cmonies we don\u2019t hope to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On top of this, the money locked up was the product of loans from some banks, he said.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWe took other facilities from commercial banks and invested them in savings and loans\u2026 So at a point in time, PBC was paying about GHc200 million interest on loans we had collected all because of mismanagement and poor management decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Hundreds of workers of PBC besieged the company\u2019s headquarters at Dzorwulu in Accra on Tuesday to register their displeasure over what they described as the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #666699;\"><strong>poor management of the company<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>They lamented about their working conditions which they described as appalling saying salary delays were consistent.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GkEr959d8SE\" width=\"600\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><br \/>Some of the workers who spoke to <strong>Citi News<\/strong> called on the government to act swiftly to address their concerns.<\/p>\n<p>They also accused the current management of being \u201cshort of ideas and lacking vision and foresight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Boateng speaking on <strong>Eyewitness News<\/strong> said he took over as CEO in 2017, the legacy debt he came to meet was about GHc650 million \u201cand if you have this debt, no bank is prepared to give you money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition, he said PBC was spending GHc15 million on servicing bank loans.<\/p>\n<p>These financial constraints mean PBC cannot fulfil its mandate as a Licensed Buying Company (LBC) which partakes in the internal marketing of cocoa as its core business.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe only means by which we drive growth is through funding\u2026 our core business is to buy the cocoa and if you don\u2019t have that money, you can\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IjtkZymkgN0\" width=\"600\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><br \/>When Mr. Boateng assumed office as CEO, he said he wrote to the Senior Minister requesting a forensic audit, which was eventually carried out and the report submitted to the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO).<\/p>\n<p>The report highlighted \u201cmismanagement, misapplication of funds and some internal leakages in the company,\u201d the CEO recalled.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSo the problem of PBC is not government\u2019s making. It is self-inflicted. That was what I saw when I took over.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong> \u2018Unwarranted projects\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Also contributing to PBC\u2019s struggles are what Mr. Boateng described as \u201cunwarranted projects\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>One of these projects included a venture into hotel management.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWe entered into hospitality where we built the Golden Bean hotel and since we built the hotel, we have been running at a loss but we borrowed money to build that hotel. We took a short term facility to undertake a long term project.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The initial budget for the hotel was GHc10 million but the company ended up using GHc42 million for the hotel \u201cwithout the board\u2019s approval,\u201d according to Mr. Boateng.<\/p>\n<p>There are also lapses in PBC\u2019s ventures into the shea nut industry.<\/p>\n<p>The company apparently bought machines meant for groundnut processing instead of she nut processing.<\/p>\n<p>This led to the initial $576,000 cost increasing to $1.6 million to address the mistake with the retooling of the old parts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe bought machines which instead of being for shea nuts, we bought groundnut machines and then we installed them\u2026 For three years they bought nuts, they became rotten and we had to write it off,\u201d Mr. Boateng said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chief Executive Officer of Produce Buying Company (PBC), Kofi Owusu Boateng, has outlined some of the crippling financial constraints that have culminated in a protest by workers of the company. Among other things, Mr. Boateng said the company has \u201cabout GHc185 million\u201d locked up in savings and loans companies. On Eyewitness News, he confessed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":674098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>PBC has GHc185m locked up in savings &amp; loans firms - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/08\/07\/pbc-has-ghc185m-locked-up-in-savings-loans-firms\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"PBC has GHc185m locked up in savings &amp; loans firms - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The Chief Executive Officer of Produce Buying Company (PBC), Kofi Owusu Boateng, has outlined some of the crippling financial constraints that have culminated in a protest by workers of the company. 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