President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has encouraged Norwegian businesses and investors to take advantage of Ghana’s business-friendly environment and invest in the country.
President Akufo-Addo assured that the government would continue to create and maintain a conducive investment environment that would not only guarantee the safety of their investments but good returns as well.
“We will continue to protect legitimate investments, and preserve the atmosphere of peace, stability and security that has been an important contributor to the increasing presence of Norwegian businesses in Ghana.”
Speaking at the Ghana-Norway Business Forum Friday, 26th November 2021, in Accra, President Akufo-Addo commended Norway’s new partner country initiative which is aimed at ensuring the partner countries become independent from aid in the near future.
That initiative, President Akufo-Addo indicated, complemented his government’s vision of a “Ghana Beyond Aid” which is aimed at shifting the focus of the country’s bilateral relations from aid to investment cooperation.
The government, he said, had put in place measures to mitigate and reduce the cost of doing business, improve the business environment which had made the economy one of the business-friendly destinations in Africa and one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
President Akufo-Addo said his government had done enough to correct the fundamentals of the country’s economy which had so far shown resilience and pointing in the right direction.
The President reassured that despite the ravages of COVID-19, the government was working hard to grow the country’s economy at a much faster rate this year to enhance the prospects of a win-win environment for both the private sector and country; “an environment where companies do the not just survive, but actually thrive.”
He said the major programme that would drive the revival and revitalisation of the economy would be the GH¢100 billion Ghana CARES ‘Obaatampa’ Programme, which elements include supporting commercial farming and attracting educated youth into commercial farming; building the country’s light manufacturing sector; developing engineering/machine tools and ICT/digital economy industries; amongst others.
“It continues to be an exciting time to be in Ghana, and to do business in the country”, President Akufo-Addo stated.
Already, global car manufacturing giants, Toyota and Nissan of Japan, Sinotruk of China, have established assembly plants in the country, as first steps towards the production of vehicles in Ghana.
Twitter is establishing its African Headquarters in Ghana, and Google’s first African Artificial Intelligence Centre is located in Ghana.
Ghana play host to the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which represents a market of 1.2 billion people in 54 countries, with a combined GDP of $3 trillion. Trading in the emerging single market began on 1st January this year”.
President Akufo-Addo said Ghana has witnessed a significant rise of Norwegian investors in several sectors of the Ghanaian economy — agriculture, building and construction, general trading, manufacturing, oil and gas, and tourism.
He said the government on his part had also embarked on an aggressive public-private partnership programme to attract investment in the construction of roads and railways infrastructure.
“We are hopeful that, with solid private sector participation, we can develop a modern railway network with strong production centre linkages and with the potential to connect us to our neighbours.”
The theme for the Ghana-Norway Business Forum was; “Reconvene; Reconnect; Reengage”.
Rex Mainoo Yeboah, ISD
