The three-week long 2010 Yam Festival of the Asogli Traditional Area, which ended on Sunday with a thanksgiving church service, represents the single most important business stimulating event in Ho and its environs for years. The celebration evidently brought back to life many businesses in Ho. Areas of business the festival nudged up include petty retail businesses, drinking spots, arts and craft shops with taxi drivers and others in the transport sector having a field day. Dormant or even collapsed businesses reorganized to join the fray once more as new ones sprung up to raise commercial activity in Ho during the past three weeks to levels incomparable to business associated with Christmas. Around the durbar ground on Saturday were both makeshift and hitherto unknown drinking spots and food vending joints. Easily noticeable on the streets were beads and artefacts, dealers from nowhere doing brisk businesses with both local and foreign tourists as their main clients. The biggest attraction was the competition among telecommunication companies, evident in their huge flyers on the streets, floats and big canopies which were all over from where their products were sold. Scores of cell phone units recharge cards vendors representing these companies jostled for prominence. Miss Esenam Anyomi, 16, a Junior High School leaver who was selling assorted items including fruit drinks and fast-foods, told the GNA she was there to witness the durbar and to satisfy the needs of revellers who might need her services and that business had been “too good”. She said she was sure to make some money to acquire some school items for school re-opens. A dealer in artefacts popularly known as “Rastaman”, who moved his shop from the outskirts of town to the durbar grounds, described the Asogli Yam Festival as the “biggest” yearly event in the municipality with massive patronage, a big economic opportunity he would not want to miss. “For the few hours that I have displayed by products here, I have already made about three months sales and received several contracts,” he said. Some other traders told the GNA that business during the festival period and particularly during the grand-durbar was good and that the festival apart from serving as a re-union offered a lot of business opportunities. The grand durbar, which climaxed the festival, was addressed by the Vice-President John Dramani Mahama, as the Guest of Honour. He called on Ghanaians to resist being divided by political affiliations. Source: GNA