Government to spur growth of businesses

Accra, July 25, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama at the weekend assured captains of industry that government would implement appropriate policies and strategies to create a conducive environment to spur the growth of businesses.

It is in this direction that government is working hard to stabilise the economy, stem the depreciation of the cedi and bring down inflation to a rate that would make business planning more predictable. "Our bid to improve Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows will continue to focus on measures aimed at reducing obstacles, increasing predictability, promoting consistency, fostering competition and marketing the variety of opportunities the country has to offer," he said.

Vice President Mahama was speaking at the eighth edition of Ghana Club 100 awards ceremony in Accra on the theme: "Celebrating Ghana's Business Leaders."

The Ghana Club 100, is a programme designed by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre to identify and award Ghana's best 100 companies according to a benchmark. This year's assessment was done using company size, profitability and growth. Government, he said, would not relent in its efforts to protect and enhance the production capacity of local businesses, but this would not be done to shield weak companies, which were unable to stand the competition.

Vice President Mahama said these principles would inform the on-going revision of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act with a view to sharpening its focus in attracting and retaining the much needed foreign direct investment.

"The dynamics for FDI attraction are changing and it has become necessary to adopt new policy responses to elicit increasing levels of FDI, especially in developing countries such as ours," he said. He lauded the Ghana Club 100 initiative and said it would provide the tonic for qualitative entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility.

"As a country we need this barometer to urge us on into working and improving on our capacity to be among the best in terms of performance and corporate excellence," Vice President Mahama said. Stanbic Bank Ghana became the number one ranked company of the 2009 Ghana Club 100 awards, followed by Scancom Limited operators of MTN and Toyota Ghana Limited.

There was also strong showing from new entrants such as IPMC, which took the ninth position and the best company in the education category. Standard Chartered Bank took a special award for best company in corporate social responsibility. But the surprise of the night was the incredible performance of the country's Rural banks with as many as 15 being among the top 100 companies. 25 July 09