EXAMINER’S GENERAL COMMENTS This examination was based on a pre-seen scenario which described Savior Box Limited (SBL), a pharmaceutical company. Started as a family business and has since grown into a pharmaceutical empire. Market leader in its home base Ghana with expansion into West African market with ambition to become a global organisation. SBL business model is operating three divisions: manufacturing, retailing and distribution and export. Decision making was rooted in its development history as a family business hence number of challenges. As a result of the challenges, the management board decision to hire a consulting firm Blessed Consulting and seconded a dedicated staff called Bismark with relevant experience for four months to support with transformational change management. The scenario was made available in advance of the exam. This is a very interesting industry and students are expected to be familiar as part of preparation toward the examination. The pre-seen was detailed and well-prepared candidates should have been able to give good answers in the context of the pharmaceutical industry. The unseen scenarios were interesting and presented some realistic questions on the industry. The standard of the paper was extremely good, and the questions were clear with preambles to assist candidates. The coverage was broad and in line with the syllabus the paper was heavy on the strategic application. All the questions were based on the recommended syllabus and study material of the Institute. The standard of the paper also shows remarkable improvement over the previous three exams diets since the Institute of Chartered Accountant (Ghana) introduced the Case Study in November 2019. Marks allocation followed the weightings in the syllabus and was fairly distributed to each question.

PERFORMANCE OF CANDIDATES Again, the trend of performance did not change much with few candidates marginally performing well. Many appeared to be ill-prepared for this examination and did not demonstrate the required level of technical knowledge and application of knowledge to the case study. Overall, candidates performed well below average especially questions number one and two. There were a number of concerns relating to student performance in several other areas. This applies to most of the questions except question four (Balanced Scorecard critical success factor (CSF)) application question. In many cases candidates described wrong strategic models despite the fact that the questions required specific models. Model application to the case study remains a challenge to candidates resulting in losing valuable marks to achieve a pass. All answers must be applied to the case study and should bring in aspects of the pre-seen information as well as the information and appendices in the unseen additional information material. Answers which are purely rote learning were quite common in some requirements and this approach is awarded very low marks. There were also a number of candidates who gavePage 2 of 35 very theoretical answers and did not apply them to the case study. Many candidates’ answers lacked depth of development and therefore, although demonstrating a basic understanding and application of knowledge, they failed to accumulate sufficient marks due to not developing their answers sufficiently. Some answers were just short and incomplete.