Executive Chairman of the Jospong Group of Companies, Joseph Siaw Agyepong, is an asset to Ghana rather than a liability, Good Evening Ghana host Paul Adom Otchere has said.

On his programme on Tuesday, 5 September, Mr Adom Otchere said he decided to associate himself with Mr Agyepong, owner of more than 40 companies including waste management firm Zoomlion, because, in “my small reading of economics, it is not politicians who build a country, it is entrepreneurs who build a country and when you have entrepreneurs, the politicians are supposed to support them…”

“From the time of Rockefeller in the 19th century, the American establishment has supported Rockefeller as a businessman, as an entrepreneur. I’m not saying when they do wrong, don’t say it, you can say it, but the reason why I am close to him – and it took me about four years to find him. Sometimes you call him and he won’t pick, he is still like that, six weeks you won’t find him, but when you find him, he’s able to tell you so many things that shock you: his ideas and you’ll see that his entrepreneurship is a gift – so as far as I am concerned, this man, Joseph Siaw Agyepong, he is not a liability to Ghana, he is an asset.

“He [Siaw Agyepong] may have his wrongs but he is an asset to this country and everyone will recognise that a man who can take your brand to Liberia – look this is a guy that the World Bank said he had done something in Liberia and they had put him on suspension, he worked so hard with the World Bank that the World Bank came out and said that he is now the template for good corporate governance and award of contracts. Such a person, Siaw Agyepong is an asset to this country, he is not a liability. …We are prepared to support local businesses; that is the only way our country can be built,” Mr Adom Otchere added.

Mr Adom Otchere extolled the entrepreneurial acumen of Mr Agyepong while responding to a comment posted on Facebook about him by investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni in connection with a statement issued by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) which cautioned the media to avoid trying local business people in the media.