President’s monthly insight – March Edition

March 28, 2019 / Comments (0)

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According to studies by Rand Merchant Bank Ltd., RMB (Corporate and Investment Banking arm of FirstRand Limited), Ghana still remains among the top 10 attractive investment destinations in Africa, although it dropped from fifth to the ninth place. Courting of foreign investors by a developing country like Ghana can be a difficult task despite the numerous advantages it possesses. The reason being that the investors must foremost be well assured of protection of monies to be invested besides other factors like peace and stability, incentives such as tax reliefs, sound policies, and improved infrastructure among others. 

One of the key components of Ghana’s trade policy is the government’s twin strategies of export-led industrialsation and domestic market-oriented industrialisation based on import competition which rely on the smooth passage of goods and services across Ghana’s borders. This is expected to be facilitated by the government through lower cost to make it easier to trade in and out of Ghana. Based on this policy, governments over the years have sought to enact laws that would bring relief to traders and also stimulate development. Lately however, of major concern to businesses has been increase in taxes and the high import duties slapped on goods imported into the country, the poor performance of the cedi against the major currencies, access to sound financial support, etc.

Despite the appraisal by the World Bank’s 2019 Doing Business Report –Training for Reform which indicated that Ghana has made progress towards improving the ease of doing business in the country, by moving six places up to rank to 114 out of 190 economies, recent happenings in the Ghanaian business environment today seem to project a divergent view. The 10 measures recently introduced by the government to create a more conducive environment for all businesses in the country as disclosed by the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia gives credence to the fact that there’s more to be done to revive the friendliness of the business environment.

As businesses call on government to take steps towards sanitizing the business environment to making it friendlier, the GGEA invites you to a forum on “The Ghanaian Business Environment Today” to be held on 10th April, 2019 at the Alisa hotel.  Issues bordering on the payment of realistic custom duties and taxes in Ghana, the business case for and against local content requirements and the experiences of private sector operators within the Ghanaian business space will be discussed and hopefully addressed. Let’s meet at this important forum.

Stephen Antwi – President

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