The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), through the Ministry of Finance, has introduced the Ghana COVID-19 Alleviation and Revitalization of Enterprise Support initiative, the Ghana CARES (Obaatan pa) programme, to Economic Counsellors of Embassies and High Commissions.

The Ghana CARES (Obaatan pa) programme is a GHC100 billion post-COVID programme to stabilize, revitalize and transform Ghana’s economy to create jobs and prosperity for Ghanaians over three years.

Ms Eva Esselba Mends, Technical Co-ordinating Director at the Ministry of Finance, at the 7th Edition of GIPC’s Economic Counsellor’s Dialogue, said the first phase of the programme would build on the actions already taken by Government under the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme.

The Economic Counsellor’s Dialogue was an annual event by the Centre to engage economic, commercial and trade counsellors of various diplomatic missions serving in Ghana.

It is a platform for enhancing commercial bilateral relations between Ghana and foreign investors.

The Dialogue aimed at creating an opportunity for members of the diplomatic corps to dialogue on improving the business and investment climate in the country.

The Centre also used the opportunity to obtain feedback from the diplomatic community to guide its activities to enhance positive investor experiences in Ghana.

These include stabilization of the economy, ensuring food security, support businesses and workers, strengthening the health system and passage of legislation to facilitate quick economic recovery.

She said the second phase aimed at revitalizing and transforming the economy from 2021-2023, focusing on supporting commercial farming and attracting educated youth into agriculture, and building Ghana’s light manufacturing sector.

Ms Mends said it was also to develop engineering and machine tools and ICT and digital economy, developing Ghana’s housing and construction industry, reviewing and optimizing the implementation of Government flagships and key programmes, among others.

The Director said the government wanted to build the capacity of the citizenry to be able to add value to raw materials to develop the economy.

She said the Finance Ministry had set up delivery Units in all the Ministries and Agencies to sign a compact with them in the implementation of the Programme.

She, therefore, called on Economic Counsellors to help the government implement its developmental agenda.

Mr Yofi Grant, the Chief Executive Officer of GIPC, said Ghana was one of the preferred investment destinations and that the country had demonstrated the desire and willingness to drive and transform the economy and the country.

The CEO said the country had also significantly endorsed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and “we are looking at how we can sustainably fund the goals” while working in collaboration with the UNDP to develop SDGs road map investment tool.”

“We have embraced the SDGs because they are important to the State and our policy direction has taken a whole new turn, especially goal on Poverty alleviation and partnership linkages,” he said.

Mr Lawrence Hotsonyame, Principal Revenue Officer at the Ghana Revenue Authority, said it was expected that anybody and investor, who did business in Ghana should comply with taxation regulations.

He called on foreign investors to endeavour to apply for non-citizen Ghana Card to enable them to honour their tax obligations.

The Revenue Officer said GRA had taken measures to identify and tax appropriately all online transactions and e-commerce ventures.

He said the exercise was just to expand the online tax net and improve on the domestic tax mobilisation drive.

Mr Madjie Simon, Executive Secretary at American Chamber of Commerce in Ghana, said members of the Chamber were opened to partnerships and were also interested in local content.

He said the members welcomed the African Continental Free Trade Area and hopeful it would open up the market for more players.