Be soft in your regulations - GIPC boss

Financial institutions in the Ghana need to design tailor-made regulations and rules to assist local investors raise requisite capital to enter into viable business venture, Mr. George Aboagye, Chief Executive Officer, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), has disclosed.

“We are telling the financial institutions and organisations to be soft in their regulations and rules to allow more local investors raise requisite capital, they should turn backwards to assist local investors to be able to put forward the capital to go into business venture,” Mr. Aboagye, told B&FT after the official launch of the ‘Invest in Ghana 2011 Seminar’ and the 2010 edition of the ‘Ghana Club 100 awards’ held in Accra.

Speaking under the theme “Partnerships for Sustained Economic Growth: The Role of The Domestic Investor”, Mr. Aboagye said: “The event seeks to address how the Ghanaian private sector should and can work together with their foreign counterparts to ensure sustained levels of growth in the economy.”

He explained that the objective is to provide a platform to bring investors and projects together to explore public private partnerships and facilitate business partnerships which support the economic growth required to enable Ghana to prosper in the emerging global economy of the 21st century.

“We believe our efforts will encourage improvement in the investment environment at the district and regional levels to ensure the spreading of investment projects across the length and breadth of the country.

“Partnering domestic investments with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), we believe, is one of the major interventions by which we can build the capacity and grow our domestic investors.”

Mr. Aboagye added: “To ensure that we do achieve our objective, the GIPC during the first quarter of this year, January to March, toured all regions and interacted with Regional, District and Metropolitan Authorities, Planning officers and the private sector to explain the role of the Centre and assist them to identify and package viable investment projects for promotion and matchmaking activities.”

These interactions will enhance the ability of domestic investors to: develop and invest in good business ideas or concepts; increase their capacity to partner other investors both local and international and also encourage local financial institutions to support worthy projects.

This year’s Invest in Ghana Seminar will focus on three parallel sessions on Agriculture and Agribusiness; Energy, Oil and Gas; Tourism; Infrastructure; Financial services; and ICT in industry, while the second and final day will be devoted to one-on-one meetings to offer investors the opportunity to meet the profiled and advertised project sponsors and also network with other stakeholders.

The event will be climaxed with the 2010 edition of the Ghana Club 100 gala dinner and awards ceremony, where companies which have excelled in their various sectors of operations will be awarded with prizes for their achievements over the past year.