Give more support to local businesses- Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur on Friday appealed to President John Dramani Mahama to show more support to the business community, especially small Ghanaian businesses to enable them to survive.

Nana Baah Okae IV, Managing Director of Abu Brands Limited, a privately-owned Ghanaian export merchant company, who made the appeal, said the move would help to avoid the crowding-out of Ghanaian businesses by foreign and multinational enterprises.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Nana Okae IV expressed dissatisfaction that foreign businesses had taken over businesses in the country.

“When you take a look at the transport, aviation or airlines, telecommunication, mining sector and agriculture, you realize that those sectors are dominated by foreign businesses”, he said.

Nana Okae IV said Ghanaian entrepreneurs needed to be empowered in order to be competitive and effectively operate so that their economic activities could have a rippling effect on the national economy.

He said the taxation system and the cost of doing business should be critically looked at to make it easy for the Ghanaian small businesses to survive.

Nana Okae IV said Ghana is endowed with vast fertile lands that could serve agricultural purposes, and added that the rich human resource base served as a comparative advantage and for socio-economic development.

He was optimistic that President Mahama had the capacity to implement effective policies that would consolidate Ghana’s economic gains.

“He is also a historian. He has observed how successive governments had performed as far as lending support to the business community is concerned. He should learn from that and show good leadership in this area”, Nana Okae IV said.

He said with support from the presidency, the Bank of Ghana could direct commercial banks and other financial institutions to lend their support to the agricultural sector.

He said if the country gave more support to agriculture, it would encourage more youth to venture into the sector, create enough employment and empower the citizenry.