Bureaucratic delays and public sector inefficiency are stalling Ghana’s efforts to turn investment projects in the pipeline into actual capital inflows, the Managing Partner of Emerging Markets Advisory Limited, Dr Abudu Abdul-Ganiyu, has said.
He said Ghana needed to improve the ease of doing business and accelerate the process of moving projects from the interest stage to signed agreements, firm commitments and, ultimately, confirmed investment inflows.
“The major challenge as we have identified here can also be attributed to the ease with which you do business in Ghana when the investors come in. How quickly we can move to a stage where agreements are signed,” he added.
Dr Abdul-Ganiyu made the remarks in Accra yesterday when he presented the maiden edition of a quarterly investment report covering 22 African countries across five sub-regions.
The report, covering the period from May to August, provides comparative information on investment conditions in countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia and Namibia, among others.
Dr Abdul-Ganiyu said Ghana had made progress in its regulatory framework, citing the country’s performance in the World Bank Business Ready Report, but noted that more needed to be done.
He said Ghana’s regulatory performance had improved from about 60 per cent in 2020 to about 66 per cent, but public sector efficiency remained a concern.
“Some countries are far higher than that, so we have to keep improving in that area, so that that regulatory environment does not hold back investment,” he said.
According to him, delays within the public sector could prevent investment projects from moving from the attention stage to firm commitments and eventually confirmed inflows.
Dr Abdul-Ganiyu also identified operational challenges, including power supply, distribution networks and transportation infrastructure, as factors that could influence investors’ decisions.
“We have in the long term our ports, our railway systems. These are all things that we have to work on, and once we do that, then we can translate most of the investments that are in the pipeline or that are in the attention stage to actual commitments and then to eventual inflows,” he said.
Dr Abdul-Ganiyu said the detailed report, which would be made available on the company’s website, would provide country-by-country information on projects at the attention stage, those with commitments and areas where confirmed inflows had been recorded.
BY BENEDICTA GYIMAAH FOLLEY
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