Sports sponsorship, a function of the economy

Any country that pays lip service to the organisation and running of sports should not expect to get laurels at any event.
For a very long time, successive political administrations in this country have given the sports fraternity tons of assurances of putting the sector at the highest places in world sports. They have at times promised to deliver the moon even when the means to climb that far is unknown to them.

One significant observation has been the manner they gloat and pose at receptions to present medals or trophies that filter in from time to time due to the efforts of some few dedicated individuals. Many times they do not even feel ashamed that they did not show much concern while these teams or individuals prepare, but are very quick to savour glories that come along with victory.

The recent revelation that government did not budget for a third place bonus for the Satellites at the recent FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Turkey cannot go without comment.

For how can a Minister of State say that the ministry budgeted for games in the group stages and the qualifying rounds but not for the medal zone? It appears then that they did not believe that the team could go far to get a medal.

Another worrying matter is the treatment meted out to the Under-20 female hockey team which participated in the recent Under-20 World Cup in Germany. They were not given the $130,000 they needed for their travel for the tournament. According to an official of the team, the players fed themselves for three weeks before leaving for Germany to represent Ghana at the tournament.

If the statement above is true, then it is a huge indictment on the part of the nation to allow people who, out of joy of serving their country, are made to bear expenses that are the direct responsibility of the state.

The official argued that “if the government does not make any input in the lesser-known sports, I do not think we can make any impact; I do not think we can conjure any magic”.

It is also interesting to know that Ghana has lost its right to participate in any international tennis tournaments after failing to pay a three-year affiliation fees of $11,000 to the International Tennis Federation (ITF).

President of the Ghana Tennis Association, Enoch Amartey, was reported by Joy Sports to have said that “we have sent our budget for the past two to three years and it is locked up at the Ministry of Finance, that’s where the difficulty lies”.

This brings to mind the recent proposal by the minister for sports, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, that it is the private sector that should take the lead role in funding sports so that government complemented the effort instead of the other way round.

He indicated at a meeting with some boxers and other sportsmen recently that the sports ministry competed with other ministries for budgetary allocation from the Ministry of Finance, which, therefore, made it difficult for government to release money for sporting activities.

“Right from the preparation of the budget, we make request, and as we request all other sectors too request. The Ministry of Finance decides how each ministry would get. So right from the word go if the money you asked for is cut by a certain percentage then there is a deficit,” he said. This is not new to anyone who cares to follow issues in Ghana.

The minister said “the immediate solution, which we have to get the courage to deal with, is that government alone cannot be able to fund sports in this country, and I think that the sooner we came to that relisation to deal with it, the better. That is why I have been advocating and pretty soon we are going to come up with a stakeholders’ conference with the private sector to look at ways government can collaborate with the private sector to fund sports in this country”.

the solution does not lie in the stakeholders meeting with the private sector. Why hold this meeting which is very likely to come out with solutions that are already known? Money that can conveniently be used to probably sponsor a training camp would be spent on people who would come and proffer no new solutions. Worse still, the outcome may not even be used for anything.

In any case, the so-called private sector that the minister wants to engage is itself being strangled to suffocating levels, and struggling for breath. Industry owners have for some time now been stating that they would need some life-saving means to turn their businesses round.

No other person than the President of the country, John Dramani Mahama, has stated that the economy is not in the best of shapes and that government was working to salvage it.

In a meeting with the Council of State, he was reported to have said “the country is currently running a high deficit which resulted from several factors, and, therefore, going forward, government will make sure those factors do not take us to a situation like that ever again”.

According to the Association of Ghana Industry Business Barometer Index quarterly review report released recently, “high level of taxation, inadequate access to credit and poor power supply emerged as the topmost challenges facing the industrial sector of the economy in the second quarter of the year”.

Again, the report said cost of credit, high cost of raw materials and high cost of utility, depreciation of the cedi, inflation, the lack of market and low purchasing power are all hindering operations of industries.

All these point to the fact that the private sector which the minster wants to court into funding of sports is themselves finding things difficult to survive.

What it means is that the government must first put in place measures that would bring the economy on to the path of growth for the private sector too to be reinvigorated to bounce back to business and the road to growth.

It is for this reason that the government should be seen to be working hard to turn the economy around.

President Mahama has indicated that “we are putting in steps that will make sure we never find ourselves in this situation in which we find ourselves” as reported by Accra-based citi FM.

We need stringent measures that would ensure that money that come into the national kitty do not find their way into private pockets but used for the purposes for which they were collected.

The bottom line is that if the economy is healthy the ministry’s budget will not “be drastically cut”, businesses will thrive, and part of profit could be then channeled as sponsorship for sports and other ventures.

Government should be seen to be up and doing by way of shouldering its responsibilities towards sports before it could call on others to help. That responsibility should not be shirked and passed on to the private sector.

By Sowah Boye/Graphic Sports/Ghana