President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has admonished the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) to effectively engage its stakeholders to attract more foreign direct investments (FDI) into the country than it did in 2020.
The GIPC attracted over $2.6 billion of foreign direct investments in 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the global economy and reduced significant foreign direct investments.
At the GIPC Annual Spark Up Investment Summit in Accra on Tuesday, President Akufo-Addo said GIPC could exploit through open, frank and solution-oriented engagement between it and other stakeholders.
The President said, “while global FDI declined by some 42% in 2020 amid COVID-19, FDI inflow recorded by Ghana through the GNPC amounted to some $2.65 billion, which backed the global trend, representing a significant increase over the 2019 FDI value.”
In keeping up with the importance of the public-private dialogue as recommended by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, he said, “I am charging GIPC to use this summit as a platform for open, frank and solution-orientated engagements between investors, regulators, and investment facilitators”.
President Akufo-Addo was hopeful that GIPC would afford the facilitator agencies, regulators and relevant public officials the opportunity to engage directly with investors and potential investors to deal with the various bottlenecks that frustrate and slow down potential investments.
That, the President said, would quickly unlock the bottlenecks for smooth registration and operation of investments to complement the government’s efforts at engineering growth and create jobs for Ghanaians.
President Akufo-Addo expressed happiness with ongoing efforts to review the Act that set up the GIPC (Act 865). It will strengthen it to continue to play a lead role in assisting the government in mobilising complementary private sector investments for the economy’s resurgence.
These institutional reforms, the President indicated, would also go a long way to strategically position GIPC to partner with the government to revive and boost the nation’s economy.
The Chief Executive Officer of the GIPC, Yoofi Grant, said Ghana’s foreign direct investment drive anchored on ten strong characteristics had contributed mainly to the inflow of FDI, influencing future investments.
According to Mr Grant, Ghana’s democratic governance, resilient economy, trade logistics and infrastructure, vast natural resource deposits and membership of important regional and international bodies are some of the major factors responsible for the success story of FDI.
Additionally, he indicated that the country’s general hospitality, ease of doing business, enabling competitive business environment, the favourable geographical and the large youthful human capital advantage are the remaining ten factors influencing the nation’s FDI.
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre is Ghana’s foremost investment attraction and promotion agency under the Office of the President. Guided by the GIPC Act 2013 (Act 865), the Centre courts and facilitates valuable investments to stimulate economic growth, unlock opportunities and spur job creation.
Rex Mainoo Yeboah, ISD
