Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Yofi Grant, has maintained that government is taking steps towards ensuring that Ghanaian businesses are not taken over by foreigners in country.
Yofi Grants’ comments follows agitations by Ghanaian traders who have been at the throat of their foreign counterparts, especially Nigerians, accusing them of flouting the laws of Ghana.
The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) has blamed the country’s weak institutions and lack of enforcement of laws for the illegal activities of foreigners.
At a recent press conference, the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) President, Dr Joseph Obeng, expressed regret that institutions in the country are letting down Ghanaian businesses by failing to enforce laws made.
Dr. Obeng threatened a demonstration by GUTA members if government fails to enforce laws governing retail trade.
Grant stated that although government is interested in the success of Ghanaian businesses, the sector needs to be clear on what “our objectives are and how we engage with other countries”.
According to him, this is because of Ghana’s partnership with African states especially with the introduction of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) with Ghana designated as the choice to host the AfCFTA Secretariat.
He further revealed that “government is looking at a sector that will remove tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade and so that is the frame in which we will look at many of these trades. But at the end of the day, the beneficiaries must be Ghana and the continent”.
On whether his outfit was looking at the CFTA to address the issue, he posited that the problem has been ongoing for the past 20 years and the country has laws which limits foreign businesses from infiltrating local markets.
The GIPC CEO said GUTA’s outcry that foreigners have infiltrated the market is legitimate.
But he averred that “What GUTA is complaining about is not new. It’s been there over the past 20 years where we have foreigners in our market. As long as the law states that if you are not a Ghanaian you can’t invest or operate in certain investments and certain areas we call markets. So that’s the law and if the law says that it must be complied with”.
Addressing the media at the 3rd Young Entrepreneur Forum in Accra today, Yofi Grant was of the view that the issue is beyond foreigners operating in Ghana because there are Ghanaian businessmen and women who have established business outside the shores of the country.
“But the problem extends beyond that because we have Ghanaians also in Nigeria, we have Ghanaians in Cote D’Ivoire. There is a criss-cross and a mismatch of inter-country relationships which we need to manage (thread carefully) and then there are the ECOWAS protocols and the CFTA so in the frame of all that we have to be careful of how we craft the law such that we are not at a disadvantage.”
