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The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has urged Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to design strategic development plans that would bring investment to their regions.
This comes on the back of the inability of some of the administrative regions in the country to attract investment inflows with the three poverty endemic regions of the north: Northern, Upper West and East, seemingly unattractive to investors.
The GIPC cited the Upper East and West regions in the northern belt as two of the regions in the country that have consistently failed to attract investments, a situation the Centre believes has been worsened by the lack of infrastructures to support investment.
According to the GIPC, which has been mandated to woo investments to the country, the strategic plans of the Assemblies will help to identify and prioritize the various opportunities at the local communities.
It also called on the MMDAs to also identify individual businesses in their Assemblies and help them to develop proposals and business plans to enable the SMEs to attract investors and capital financing.
This came to light at a GIPC sensitization outreach held recently in Tamale. The programme was on the theme: ‘Industrialization through Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs )promotion and making available land for investment purposes.’
The one-day forum was aimed at sensitizing investors on opportunities that exist in various Assemblies and the best ways to tap into them.
The Director for Monitoring and Tracking at GIPC, Daniel Laryea stressed the need for the MMDAs to collaborate with the traditional leaders to make land available for investors since the land tenure system is one of the key challenges that face investors.
He urged the investors to take advantage of the tax incentives of the region to harness the potentials to create more jobs.
“The low investment records give us some indication of the need to make a frantic effort to improve upon the figures hence the investment outreach sensitization programmes to whip up the interest of investors.
“We are here to harness data on various land and properties to enrich the land bank database and make them available for investors who intend to invest in the country for them to know the potentials that exist within the regions,” he said.
The Northern Regional Minister, Abubakari Abdallah commended GIPC for such an initiative as it will help bring to the fore the potentials that exist in the regions.
