GIPC to reposition to attract more investments
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) is to be positioned to make Ghana the best destination for doing business in terms of its attractiveness and ease of doing business.
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It will also be made to play a critical role to facilitate the entry and exit of investors.
The new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GIPC, Mr Yoofi Grant, said this in an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic upon assumption of office.
He admitted to the challenge saying, “Although this looks a huge task that will require a number of players and reforms, we believe it is possible because it is a concept we have designed and will ensure to execute it ourselves.”
Focus on local investors
Sounding confident about his intentions, he said: “We are not going to focus only on international business but also their local counterparts,” adding, “This is because the foreign investors investigate to see whether local companies in a particular country are doing well before they come in to invest.”
Mr Grant, an astute investment banker with many years of experience in the financial services industry, said: “For us, business is business. It is very crucial to make it attractive to both local and international business people.”
According to him, “once you open up the business space for the local entrepreneurs to thrive, it also opens up your country’s economy for foreign investments and that will be executed as such without fail.”
Mr Grant admitted that a lot had not be done as a country over the years as far as opening up for business to be attractive is concerned.
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“I also do agree that the economy has not been good as we desire and entrepreneurs do not have the capital to start business,” he said.
That notwithstanding, Mr Grant said, there were several people who had started businesses and were doing well in Ghana and on the international stage. For him, it is not the only factor that prevents the growth of business in the country but also, it “is about the kind of support we provide as a country for the businesses to grow.”
One-stop shop
One of the major challenges investors face when they enter the country has to do with the ease of doing business. Registration of businesses and access to other relevant documents take a long time as they are compelled to move from one spot to the other. This practice is not only frustrating but expensive because it takes time.
Against this background, Mr Grant said: “We also need to help the businesses in the area of providing ready market for them. This is because the growth of businesses at the end of the day is the catalyst for the growth of the country’s economy.”
“There has been a lot of effort to try and make the GIPC a one-stop shop for people who want to set up businesses, especially foreigners, and so I want to make it a priority to ensure that is done. Therefore, I am going in there to ascertain the stage of that concept.
What we are going to do is to set up a unit to ensure the ease of setting up a new start-up. One of the key challenges is that you go to GIPC to register your business and you need to go to other agencies or departments to get a licence which also takes several months,’’ Mr Grant said.
He said a specialised wing of GIPC would be set up to accept documents “and ensure the smooth registration of a business without walking to all the agencies to register one after the other.”
That, we believe, will be a service to a lot of companies “because it is a cost for them if they need to go back and forth.”
Mr Grant said he was hopeful that “if you make it formal for a unit to ensure all this is done, it will be very welcoming to the business community and GIPC will serve its purpose of facilitating entry to businesses and setting them up.”
But to do all that effectively, Mr Grant said: “We also need to have a brand which is marketable and that means that there are certain things we need to eliminate such as corruption. We also need to work through systems and structures and transfer most of the process into automation. We also need to make the country good through proper communication.”