Budgeting and Its Effect on the Financial Performance of Listed Manufacturing Firms: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms Listed on Ghana Stock Exchange

Organizations in both developed and developing countries face high competitions in the business sector. It is essential that businesses that want to remain competitive develop the desire of identifying the role of budgeting and its effect on their financial performance. In this regard, this study explored the role of budgeting and its effect on financial performance of listed manufacturing firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange as a case study. Specifically, the study sought to examine the role of budgeting and to analyze the impact of budgeting on the financial performance of these firms. Both cross-sectional and convenient sampling techniques were used to select fifty-one (51) respondents as the sample size of the study. Questionnaires were used to obtain data from the respondents. The correlation matrix was used to establish a positive relationship between budgeting and financial performance. The study discovered that budgeting plays imperative roles in the financial performance of listed manufacturing firms. The study again unveiled that there is a strong positive correlation between budgeting and financial performance. The study also concludes that planning; monitoring and control; coordination and evaluation plays a vital role and has a positive effect on the financial performance of manufacturing firms. The study recommends that managers must produce comprehensive budgetary plans to enable the employment of long-term plans. Annual budgeting review must also be incorporated permanently to enable the manufacturing firms to identify key financial indicators for their business and how and when to monitor them and to plan for future operations, refine existing strategic plans and considers how they can respond to current competitions. Keywords: Budgeting, Financial Performance, Manufacturing Firms, Ghana Stock Exchang

The Impact of Job Satisfaction on Employees’ Loyalty and Commitment: A Comparative Study Among Some Selected Sectors in Ghana

Job satisfaction is one of the vital needs of a most employees in any well-structured organization and vital to all corporate management. It is believed that the prospect business will depend on the level of employees’ satisfactions. The drive of the study is to find whether job satisfaction has impact on the employees’ loyalty and commitment. The study utilized descriptive and exploratory research design. The study population was the entire employees in the selected sectors in Ghana. A total of (150) employee from the mining, financial and manufacturing industries were sampled. Multiple regression analysis was used to predict the unknown value of a variable from the known value of variable also called predictors. According to findings of this study, the model shows a significant and positive relationship, individual factor contribute to the satisfaction but does not have a strong impact on job satisfaction in all sectors. The study again portrayed that, there was at least a positively significant relation between the human resources practices’, job satisfaction and loyalty/commitment in various sectors. The study concluded that job satisfaction showed a significant impact on loyalty and commitment in the manufacturing and mining sector and there was at least significant relationship between the human resource practices, job satisfaction and loyalty/commitment in various sectors which validates the various theories and studies. The study also recommends that, stakeholders of the sectors should pay more attention to employees’ loyalty and commitment as this will enhance the improvement and help survive the current competition within these sectors. Keywords: Ghana, Job satisfaction, Employee’s Loyalty, Commitment

The Dynamics of the Relationship between Stock Market Development and Economic Growth in Zambia

Stock market activities assume a crucial role in determining the level of economic activities in both developing and developed economies, by effectively facilitating capital for investment, providing a proper stage to incite best corporate practices that will bring about growing investment and hence leading to a rise in the growth rate of the economy. In this regard, this study sought to empirically examine the dynamic relationship between stock market development and economic growth in Zambia. Using vector autoregressive (VAR) model and Granger causality test on quarterly time series data spanning 1996Q1-2015Q4, the study discovered that there existed a unidirectional causality running from market capitalisation to economic growth. By including certain macroeconomic variables as control variables, it was rather found that fluctuations in economic growth have significant predictive impacts on the current market capitalisation. The study further found that with the exception of inflation, changes in the level of money supply and foreign direct investment have no impacts on economic growth in Zambia

The Dynamics of the Relationship between Stock Market Development and Economic Growth in Zambia

Stock market activities assume a crucial role in determining the level of economic activities in both developing and developed economies, by effectively facilitating capital for investment, providing a proper stage to incite best corporate practices that will bring about growing investment and hence leading to a rise in the growth rate of the economy. In this regard, this study sought to empirically examine the dynamic relationship between stock market development and economic growth in Zambia. Using vector autoregressive (VAR) model and Granger causality test on quarterly time series data spanning 1996Q1-2015Q4, the study discovered that there existed a unidirectional causality running from market capitalisation to economic growth. By including certain macroeconomic variables as control variables, it was rather found that fluctuations in economic growth have significant predictive impacts on the current market capitalisation. The study further found that with the exception of inflation, changes in the level of money supply and foreign direct investment have no impacts on economic growth in Zambia

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Empirical impact of financial service access on farmers income in Ghan

The impact of access to financial services (AFS) and access to informal financial services (AIFS) on farmer income is examined in this study. After a multi-stage random sampling procedure, the study used a sample size of 478 people from two regions in Ghana. The endogenous treatment regression (ETR) model was used to account for selection bias while the unconditional quantile regression (UQR) model was used for a heterogenous analysis. The findings showed that education, financial literacy, IT access, farm size, and distance were all factors of access to financial services. Similarly, the findings revealed a positive and statistically significant link between household income and access to formal financial services. Similarly, there was a positive and significant association between access to informal financial services and household income. The findings showed that access to formal and informal financial services has different effects on household income. As a result, the effects of access to financial services on income varied by quantile. Based on the findings of the study, we developed policies to boost financial services accessibility as a means of increasing household income

Does the Adoption of Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices Impact Farmers’ Income? Evidence from Ghana

People’s lives, particularly farmers’, have been affected by extreme weather conditions that have reduced the yield of numerous crops due to climate change. Climate-smart agriculture practices can reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and have the propensity to increase farm income and productivity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to ascertain whether CSA practices impact farmers’ income. This study includes all cocoa farmers in the selected districts in the Ashanti Region. The population includes those who live in the six cocoa production villages. The multistage sampling procedure was considered based on the dominants of literature. The study used an endogenous switching regression framework to examine the effects of the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) on farmers’ income. While estimating treatment effects, telasso uses lasso techniques to select the appropriate variable sets. The results revealed that gender, farm experience, age, household size, and farm size do not significantly influence the adoption of irrigation and crop insurance. The study revealed a significant positive impact of access to credit on adopting irrigation and crop insurance. The adoption of climate-smart practices has a positive coefficient. This indicates that if all respondents in each region adopts these practices, their income would increase significantly. This study shows that adopting irrigation practices leads to an increase in household income of 8.6% and 11.1%, respectively, for cocoa farmers. Crop insurance has a positive coefficient and is statistically significant on household income, on-farm, and off-farm. This paper shows that climate-smart practices such as crop insurance can positively influence farmers’ income in Ghana. We also conjecture that crop insurance is the most effective and efficient climate-smart practice among the various agricultural practices. The study suggests that access to credit and mass awareness should be compulsory modules coupled with the consistent training of farmers on new technologies for effective policy implementation. Expanding access to extension officers could enhance farmers’ adaptive capacity and warrant the efficiency of implemented practices

The Impact of Cooperative Membership on Fish Farm Households’ Income: The Case of Ghana

The emergence of agricultural cooperatives is extensively viewed as a necessary institutional arrangement that can help farmers in developing countries overcome the constraints that impede them from improving sustainable agricultural production and acquiring new marketing opportunities. Therefore, this study examines the determinants of cooperative membership and its impact on fish farm household income, using data collected from two regions in Ghana. An endogenous switching regression (ESR) model is utilized to address the potential sample selection bias issue. The results show that household heads’ decisions to join cooperatives are affected by their access to credit, off-farm work, education level, and peer influence. Cooperative membership can increase both household and farm income by 28.54% and 34.75%, respectively. Moreover, we show that different groups of households’ cooperative impacts on farm and household income are heterogeneous. Our findings highlight the importance of cooperative patronization and provide implications that can improve households’ welfare

The Impact of Cooperative Membership on Fish Farm Households’ Income: The Case of Ghana

The emergence of agricultural cooperatives is extensively viewed as a necessary institutional arrangement that can help farmers in developing countries overcome the constraints that impede them from improving sustainable agricultural production and acquiring new marketing opportunities. Therefore, this study examines the determinants of cooperative membership and its impact on fish farm household income, using data collected from two regions in Ghana. An endogenous switching regression (ESR) model is utilized to address the potential sample selection bias issue. The results show that household heads’ decisions to join cooperatives are affected by their access to credit, off-farm work, education level, and peer influence. Cooperative membership can increase both household and farm income by 28.54% and 34.75%, respectively. Moreover, we show that different groups of households’ cooperative impacts on farm and household income are heterogeneous. Our findings highlight the importance of cooperative patronization and provide implications that can improve households’ welfare