The Chief Executive of the Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC), Mr. Yofi Grant, has said his outfit is keen on seeing a transformative business environment that promotes growth and partnerships. To this end, he said the GIPC has been pushing “a very aggressive agenda of reform” to make sure that first of all there is a dramatic improvement on the ease of doing business in the country.
While recognizing the government’s efforts in realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he noted that it could not be delinked from the transformative agenda the Center has been pursuing, thus the GIPC is putting Ghana at the forefront of investors and partnerships.
“For us, at the GIPC the most critical element is SDG 17 which emphasizes on partnership,” and these partnerships, he said, are not just being sought with foreign direct investors but indigenous investors among others as partners in realising the transformation agenda.
Mr. Grant, who was speaking at the preliminary session of the 2020 Ghana Economic Forum in Accra, mentioned that the Center has been embarking on its foreign trips in recent times with local business delegation made of members of the private sector including those from the financial sector.
With the ratifying and subsequent operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), he also said, it has offered the Center “an opportunity to scale up.” He said the Ghana story is summarized by the three O’s – Opportunity, Open and Optimism.
In his remarks, he noted that the government had to attain economic stability in order to bring into realization its agenda to transform the economy. Among others, he said the government had to ensure that senior high school education became the minimum education level of Ghanaians, thus the introduction of the Free Senior High School (FSHS) programme.
This, he said, was very important for transforming the economy. The others, which bothers on the structure of the economy informed such policies like the One District One Factory (1D1F), which sought to move the country from it raw-materials export-based approach to adding value to the resources, he opined.
This year’s GEF is being held under the theme “Resetting the Economy Beyond COVID-19; Building Economic Resilience and Self-Sufficiency.”
The two-day event has already attracted a number of high-profile attendance including the Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, members of the diplomatic corps as well as captains of industries.
