Liberalization of the Financial Sector and Access to Credit by the Micro and Small-Scale Enterprises: Conintergration Analysis

The financial system of sub-Sahara African countries had long been shackled with extensive imprudent regulations operated on inefficient grounds. This paper estimates the impact of macroeconomic factors on credit to the private sector with emphasis on micro and small-scale enterprises in a regime of financial sector liberalization in Ghana. The paper demonstrates the predicaments of Ghana’s inability to liberalize its financial sector and the consequent limitations imposed on access to financial services by the micro and small-scale enterprises. We used the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test for unit root and the Johansen-Juselius multivariate approach to cointegration to test for stationarity and a long-run relationship among the variables in the model. Error correction model (ECM) was used to estimate the short-run impacts. The results indicate that variations in credit to the private sector in a liberalized financial sector are explained significantly by the variables in the model in both the long-run and the short-run. An indication of a large percentage of financial deepening is demonstrated by the study, which leads to an expansion of the volume of institutional credit to enterprises including the micro and small-scale enterprises after the financial sector liberalization in Ghana. Keywords: Cointegration, Stationarity, ADF Test, Error Correction Model, Micro and Small-Scale enterprise

Internalizing the Negative Externalities of Mining in Ghana: Should Corporate Social Responsibility Be Voluntary?

Mining operations in Ghana and elsewhere have resulted in both positive and negative externalities in mining countries. Whilst the positive externalities have always been highlighted, not much attention has been paid to the negative externalities on mining communities despite several protestations from civil societies, NGOs and people living in mining areas. The impact of the negative externalities as manifested in health, social and environmental consequences have been borne by mining communities at huge cost. In the face of the consequences of the negative externalities, many have questioned whether CSR as a mechanism to address mining organizations’ negative impact on society should remain voluntary. This paper looks at the negative externalities of mining activities on communities and proposes that mining companies should internalise the cost of negative externalities arising out of their operations through CSR to avert future regulations of their impact on society. Keywords: Externalities, CSR, Mining, Investment, Cos

Global, regional, and national burden of tuberculosis, 1990–2016: results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2016 Study

Background Although a preventable and treatable disease, tuberculosis causes more than a million deaths each year. As countries work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target to end the tuberculosis epidemic by 2030, robust assessments of the levels and trends of the burden of tuberculosis are crucial to inform policy and programme decision making. We assessed the levels and trends in the fatal and non-fatal burden of tuberculosis by drug resistance and HIV status for 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016. Methods We analysed 15 943 site-years of vital registration data, 1710 site-years of verbal autopsy data, 764 site-years of sample-based vital registration data, and 361 site-years of mortality surveillance data to estimate mortality due to tuberculosis using the Cause of Death Ensemble model. We analysed all available data sources, including annual case notifications, prevalence surveys, population-based tuberculin surveys, and estimated tuberculosis cause-specific mortality to generate internally consistent estimates of incidence, prevalence, and mortality using DisMod-MR 2.1, a Bayesian meta-regression tool. We assessed how the burden of tuberculosis differed from the burden predicted by the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, average years of schooling, and total fertility rate. Findings Globally in 2016, among HIV-negative individuals, the number of incident cases of tuberculosis was 9·02 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 8·05–10·16) and the number of tuberculosis deaths was 1·21 million (1·16–1·27). Among HIV-positive individuals, the number of incident cases was 1·40 million (1·01–1·89) and the number of tuberculosis deaths was 0·24 million (0·16–0·31). Globally, among HIV-negative individuals the age-standardised incidence of tuberculosis decreased annually at a slower rate (–1·3% [–1·5 to −1·2]) than mortality did (–4·5% [–5·0 to −4·1]) from 2006 to 2016. Among HIV-positive individuals during the same period, the rate of change in annualised age-standardised incidence was −4·0% (–4·5 to −3·7) and mortality was −8·9% (–9·5 to −8·4). Several regions had higher rates of age-standardised incidence and mortality than expected on the basis of their SDI levels in 2016. For drug-susceptible tuberculosis, the highest observed-to-expected ratios were in southern sub-Saharan Africa (13·7 for incidence and 14·9 for mortality), and the lowest ratios were in high-income North America (0·4 for incidence) and Oceania (0·3 for mortality). For multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, eastern Europe had the highest observed-to-expected ratios (67·3 for incidence and 73·0 for mortality), and high-income North America had the lowest ratios (0·4 for incidence and 0·5 for mortality). Interpretation If current trends in tuberculosis incidence continue, few countries are likely to meet the SDG target to end the tuberculosis epidemic by 2030. Progress needs to be accelerated by improving the quality of and access to tuberculosis diagnosis and care, by developing new tools, scaling up interventions to prevent risk factors for tuberculosis, and integrating control programmes for tuberculosis and HIV