Fallout from Citi Business Festival
By Ernest KISSIEDU
Mr. Yoofi Grant, Chief Executive of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), has indicated that Ghana needs an open market that will attract more foreign capital and investments for an enhanced socio-economic development.
“The importance of foreign capital is that it is able to create for others to also develop. You brood your business from other people’s money,” he noted.
“Ghana has democratic credentials that put us in the top position to attract capital into the market. We want to create a lot of business opportunities for Ghanaians but will use foreign capital if need be,” he stated at the launch of Citi Business Festival in Accra about a week ago.
The launch of 2017 edition of the Citi Business Festival, which runs throughout June, brought together businesses leaders and other government officials. The festival, which is sponsored by MTN Business and Premium Bank, will include a series of on-air and outdoor events which will touch on different areas of the economy.
Open up
Mr. Grant believes that the nation must open up its retail space for businesses to come in from everywhere. “Ghana should become the best place to do business in Africa and the best place to invest in. And that requires significant change in the way we do things.
“The more investments we have, the more businesses we can create; and the more businesses we create, the more jobs we can have,” he emphasized.
According to Mr. Grant, the country has not had great capital formation since independence and so it seems restricted and confined to the very base level of doing business.
“Let’s make business the priority of people. Let’s all be servants of business. That is how we are going to achieve the things we desire for ourselves by creating opportunity. The 1D1F (One-District-One-Factory), for example, aims to democratize businesses and create opportunities in every corner of this country.”
“It will create jobs for our teeming youth coming out of the universities who cannot find employment and also stem the flow of rural-urban migration every year; and enable the urban areas to grow without undue pressure,” Mr. Grant added.
The GIPC boss revealed that though Ghana prides itself of having an agriculture mission; it spends US$2.2 billion on foods importation.
“A country with over 8 million hectares of lands and says that 60 per cent of its citizens are engaged in agriculture, we import foods to the tune of US$2.2 billion every year. Nothing is happening. It’s because we haven’t yet invited the spirit of business. We need to embrace it,” he lamented.
75% of businesses failing
On his part, Business Development Minister, Mr. Ibrahim Awal Mohammed observed that small businesses constitute over nine per cent of all businesses in the country.
“The rate of failure is very high. 75 per cent of all businesses in this country do not go beyond three years and those that go beyond three years; do not go beyond 10 years. This is not good enough.”
“These small businesses employ between five and 20 people. They bring the money and also contribute about 75 per cent to Ghana’s GDP, yet the rate of failure is very high,” he stressed.
Mr. Awal Mohammed commended Citi FM for their contributions towards promoting businesses to enhance Ghana’s socio-economic development.
