Business News of Monday, 24 March 2014

Source: Daily Guide

Businesses urged to adopt technology

Moses K. Baiden, Chief Executive of the Margins Group of Companies, has urged businesses to adopt the technological way of transacting business.

According to him, the dependence on face-to-face approach to doing business brings inefficiency and sometimes corruption.

Any notion that the security of a person’s money is guaranteed in face-to-face business transactions is false and must be discarded, he said.

Mr. Baiden, who was speaking in an interview with DAILY GUIDE when the Danish Minister for Trade and Development Cooperation, Mogens Jensen, paid a working visit to the company, said, “If we take the human beings out and bring in technology, Africa can grow from zero to hundred in five seconds”.

He explained that “if I can get government service without having to talk to anybody it means you don’t have to bribe anybody so the people who are going to benefit from this leap in technology are the citizens – both in the public services and the commercial and social services.”

Dr. Mustapha Ahmed, Minister of State, who represented the Trade and Industry Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, said, “I am very impressed about the level of sophistication in the technology that Margin ID employ in the service that they provide. I am convinced that they can even provide more services using the machines, equipment and the technology they have here”.

He urged the company to explore the opportunities in the telecommunication sector in order to expand their services, stating that “by so doing, the company will be providing more employment for our youth who are ICT inclined”.

Margins ID Group, which was incorporated in 1999, has three subsidiaries, the first of which is Margins ID Systems; a solutions, systems designs, and integration company, in the electronic identity, security and transactions market.

The second is Intelligent Card Production Systems Company (ICPS), the largest certified facility for the production of electronic identity cards, banking cards, telephone cards and security printing in Africa.

The third is Identity Management Systems Limited, a special purpose vehicle which is in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) with the National Identification Authority (NIA) to design, build, finance, operate and transfer the system to NIA.

More recently, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved a mixed credit of USD$3.5m to the Margins ID Group to fully complete its certified factory to produce secure certified cards that meets all international quality bench marks.

The company is the only certified full service card manufacturing facility in West Africa and has produced over 11 million Ghana National ID Cards.