The Head of Economics at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, (ISSER), Dr Charles Godfred Ackah, has expressed worry about the high cost of doing business in Ghana.
According to him, the cost of registration of businesses and interest on lending are high, thus making it difficult for businesses to expand to absorb the labour force.
In an interview with Class Business, Dr Ackah said for the country to see economic growth, it must move beyond the structure of the economy and invest heavily in agricultural and industrialisation.
“Over the last five years, we’ve had global challenges again and those challenges have fed into our economy because we didn’t do anything about it. So now most of our problems are foreign-imported and the rest are structural problems. We need to move beyond the structure of the economy to agriculture and industrialisation. And we need to again reduce the cost of doing business. It’s too expensive to do business in Ghana, so most of the micro enterprises have collapsed and those that have not collapsed are just surviving. It is very difficult,” he stated.
“The interest rate on lending is high, registering business is high, hotels are high, transport cost is high, [and] everything is high. Even mobile telecommunication is high, buying data is high. If you compare to other countries, you can’t do business like that and survive and be able to expand and employ. And, so, in a matter of few years we expect a turnaround in the economy.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
