The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has expressed readiness to cooperate with the government to address significant issues within the business community, following plans to establish a National Business Consultative Platform.
President John Dramani Mahama announced the initiative, which aims to foster engagement between the government and private sector players, provide feedback on policies, and identify solutions to support business development.
In an interview with Citi News, Dean of Regional Chairs of the Association of Ghana Industries, Tsonam Akpeloo said concerns about heavy taxes and difficulty securing capital should be addressed during the dialogue.
We are talking about a lot of taxes, and we are asking the government to take away some of these taxes that are affecting the growth of the sector. We are also talking about access to capital, and the cost associated with accessing this capital.
“These are issues that the government needs to deal with because we believe that it is only when the president is on this issue that bothers, that he will be able to take the right decisions and actions.
So for us, this needs to have a more structured approach to ensuring that we meet the government. We are happy to cooperate to set it up and ensure that it will not just be a launch but rather a meaningful, and productive engagement with the government,” he stated.
Akpeloo further urged the government to improve the capacity of local industries, to gain a competitive advantage in the production of essential products on the market, and to help lessen the rate of importation of these products into the country.
The government needs a certain drastic measure to promote local production because there are products in Ghana that we do have competitive advantages over. There are things that we can produce not only for the Ghanaian market but also to export.
“What we require is for the government to discourage importation of these products that we have and can produce locally. That way, the government will provide the needed capacity for local industry to be able to produce 24 hours.
Most of our production lines only produce 50% capacity. We need to make sure that we increase the production to employ people and the only way we do that is when the government discourages the importation of these products that we have local capacity to produce,” he said.
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