President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Friday evening, met with the Chief Executive Officers of the Ghana Club 100 companies at the Jubilee House in Accra to discuss ways to improve the business climate in the country and make Ghanaian companies competitive on the global stage.
The meeting with the top brass of business executives created an opportunity for the President to explain the various programmes and policies his administration has in place to position the country on the path of sustained progress and prosperity.
President Akufo-Addo said due to the prudent macroeconomic management by his government over the past two years, Ghana had become the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in West Africa.
From 3.4 per cent in 2016, he said real GDP growth increased to 8.1 per cent in 2017 and had been growing steadily, making Ghana’s recent GDP growth one of the highest in the world.
“The debt to GDP ratio has declined from 56.6 per cent of GDP in 2016 to 54.8 at the end of 2018. Inflation has dropped down from 15.4 per cent at the end of 2016 to 9.5 per cent in April this year. Interest rates are declining and so is the Bank of Ghana Monetary Policy rate.
“Our trade balance account, for the first time in more than a decade, recorded a surplus in 2017 and is expected to remain in surplus. These are good figures and we expect impressive figures and good performance to continue,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo expressed the government’s commitment to ensure that it did not lose sight of the importance of maintaining fiscal discipline and correct fundamentals of the economy.
He said the government’s programme for the private sector was focused on policies that would stimulate a “symbiotic relationship between industry and the agricultural sectors thereby creating the ripple effect of growth in the entire economy”.
President Akufo-Addo indicated that his administration was bent on developing strategic industries out of the nation’s abundant natural resources of bauxite and iron ore and had established the Ghana Integrated Aluminum Corporation to assemble the relevant financial resources for the exploitation and development of the full value chain of Ghana’s large bauxite deposits.
The General Manager of MTN Business, Sam Addo, commended the government for the initiatives to soothe the investment climate in Ghana.
He expressed the hope that the government would not extend the National Fiscal Stabilisation Levy in December 2019 as promised.
“We believe there are ways to provide a more enabling environment for telcos to operate. With this, the revenue pile will expand, increase tax contributions, while avoiding the risk of industry shrinkage with increase taxes in segments such as mobile money,” he said.
BY YAW KYEI
