Reducing cost of doing business: Minister unveils action plan

New and existing businesses seeking documentation for their operations should be able to do so within a relatively shorter period effective end of this month.

It follows the implementation of a rapid reform action plan towards reducing the duration of registration and cost of doing business in Ghana.

The new agenda being pursued by the government together with the private sector businesses, is targeted at making Ghana more competitive both within Africa and around the globe.

In the World Bank’s latest ease of doing business report, Ghana ranked 108^th out of a total of 190 countries surveyed.

Although this was an improvement over the previous year’s 111^th position, the Trade Minister says more needs to be done to reduce the turnaround time for businesses in Ghana.

At a stakeholders engagement involving the private sector as well as Ministries, Departments and Agencies, Alan Kyerematen was hopeful Ghana could overtake countries such as Mauritius who is currently occupying the 45^th position.

At the moment, it takes fourteen days and eight procedures to complete registration for starting a new business.

This costs 615 cedis plus 50 percent of the company’s stated capital.

The number of procedures and days of registering a new business according to the Registrar General’s Department, has been reduced to 6 and five days respectively.

The three other indicators that the reform action plan is targeted at include; getting electricity, constructing permits and trading across borders.

Initially, it will cost a business 62,000 cedis to obtain electricity after completing 4 procedures within 79 days.

The agencies have since initiated some reforms which has reduced the initial payment to about 20,000 cedis while it will take a business about 28 days to get medium to high voltage connections.

Meanwhile, in obtaining construction permits, the initial turnaround time has been slashed by more than half from 170 to 69 days while the number of procedures has been reduced by a day from 14 to 13.

This has largely been influenced by massive slashes especially by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ghana Water Company Limited who have reduced their turnaround days from 25 to 5 and 30 to 14 working days respectively.

The fourth indicator, bordering on trade facilitation seeks to reduce the turnaround time for exports from 197 to 100 hours by 2019 and reduce cost from 322 to 197 dollars within the period.

In the meantime, the time to import has been slashed by thrice while cost to import with border compliance has equally reduced from 775 to 553 dollars.

The private sector businesses have since lauded the move to make them competitive to meet the agenda of private sector growth.

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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana

New and existing businesses seeking documentation for their operations should be able to do so within a relatively shorter period effective end of this month. It follows the implementation of a rapid reform action plan towards reducing the duration of registration and cost of doing business in Ghana. The new agenda being pursued by the ... Read Full Story