Mr. Speaker, I know how to calculate that, and even where they make a profit, before tax, of ¢10 billion at least after taking everything, they have about ¢7 billion outstanding. Mr. Speaker, I think the Budget has run through a whole lot of issues which are supposed to give hope.
For example, paragraph 971 talks about the problem of high lending rates which the Government and the Bank of Ghana and the banks obviously are looking at,
in order to resolve it. This is basically to translate them into corporate entities to make money available for us to invest to support private sector development which we have been harping on.
So Mr. Speaker, I like the idea of the venture capital which we are introducing to support a lot of other corporate entities in the system. All these measures have been taken along to make sure that our corporate entities actually benefit. The Central Security Deposit System of the Bank of the Ghana is to assure every investor that we would move ahead. Our nation will obviously develop if we have such systems in the whole process, and we have done a lot to make sure that we actually benefit.
Mr. Speaker, taking individuals into consideration, I think Members have run through the personal tax and other things that we have introduced. Mr. Speaker, in the year 2000, the minimum wage was about ¢2,900 as against an exchange rate of ¢7,000 and that translated to about 0.4 of a dollar. When in 2004, it was ¢11,200 with even an exchange rate of ¢9,100 we had $1.23. And now that we have moved to ¢13,500, that means that we have about 1.48 of a dollar.
So obviously, we are not saying that we completed everything, but we are gradually moving to where we want to be, and as the economy is expanding and we are working through it, with security of everybody well catered for, obviously we will be making progress.
Mr. Speaker, there is a lot that we have talked about, with regard to a special transportation scheme. Recently, in Koforidua, when the commercial operators refused to operate, the buses went there and it reduced the burden that