Otabil: 'Businesses being killed with high taxes'

Pastor Mensa Otabil has said businesses are being killed through high taxes.

"For a nation to be great, its laws have to facilitate growth. You cannot overtax businesses and kill them and hope them to survive at the same time; it doesn’t work that way," the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) founder told an audience of young entrepreneurs on Saturday February 27 in his keynote address at the grand finale of the Springboard road show organised by Albert and Comfort Ocran.

"If we want businesses to survive and to thrive, we have to create an environment for businesses to thrive," he said.

In his view, some of the most successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople in the world would have found it difficult to achieve the laurels they are currently famed for, had they found themselves in a stifling and “poisonous” atmosphere like Ghana’s.

"I asked this question sometime ago on this same platform: If Mark Zuckerberg was a Ghanaian and had the idea of Facebook, would his idea have thrived? If Steve Jobs had the great idea of Apple and was a thriving computer engineer in Kokomlemle, would he have built that world class brand? I don't know. But it seems to me all of us are [in agreement] it would have been extraordinary for them to have succeeded. So, what's the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and you [audience], Steve Jobs and you? It's not brains, it's the Sulphur, it's the environment," he answered.

"That is why for most of you young men, don't just focus on your dreams, demand for the right environment to be created also, and the right environment is not NPP or NDC; parties don't govern nations, laws and policies govern nations. Go beyond party names and start examining policies and demanding policies that will make you thrive, so that if you want to set up a business, your business can thrive. Because if we don't do that we'll waste our talents, we'll waste our gift; we'll be world class but play at the village level. And it has nothing to do with your dreams or your talent, it has all to do with the environment. We have to force the politicians to think of us, and to think of our lives, and to think of our future, and to think of our dreams. And the only way to do that is for you to start thinking, not in party terms, but in policy terms and making sure that the laws that govern your industry favour you because if that doesn't happen, dreamers will die with their dream unrealised.

Keynote address to let you know: if you abandon your destiny in somebody's hand, he won't help you. If you wait and say: 'Well government is good, government will take care of me one day – they won't. People will not give you what is yours until you ask and demand for it. And if you don't demand for it, you'll be bypassed. I see a lot of young men here, young women here, I used to be one of you not long ago with great dreams, have I fulfilled my dreams? Not even a tenth of what I wish I could do with my life…" Dr Otabil said.

He said the sulphuric environment in the country kills dreams and stifles potential.

"The challenge for nations like Ghana is not the challenge of talented citizens. It is the challenge of poisonous environment: an environment that has been poisoned by ordinariness, by mediocrity and sometimes by a clear agenda to destroy talents. And how can a nation be great when its systems are fighting the talent of its people? What have we put in the environment in the soil that is killing the dream of young men and young women? How can people go to university – and for years – and not know what to do? How can people with potential not fulfill their potential? If you take a simple area like football, the greatest Ghanaian players now were all onions that were planted in a different soil. They had to go outside Ghana for their talents to become world class. Do you think if Michael Essien had continued playing in the Ghana league, we will call his name? No! Is he talented? Yes! A person can be so good but if planted in a wrong environment he will be so bad," the motivational preacher added.