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High utility cost, taxes plague businesses in Ghana: report

Xinhua, February 9, 2017 Adjust font size:

Businesses in Ghana continue to be plagued by high utility tariffs, the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) said in its 2016 fourth quarter business barometer report, local media reported Wednesday.

The report cited other challenges such as high cost of credit, multiplicity of taxes and cedi depreciation as daunting challenges confronting business entities.

The report, which compared business operations in the third and fourth quarters of 2016, indicated that 70 percent of businesses surveyed however expected business confidence to improve.

This compared with about 57 percent of businesses recorded in the previous quarter, the report said, adding that the number of businesses that expected business confidence to remain the same dropped from 37 percent to 26 percent over the period under review.

Businesses that expected confidence to worsen dropped from 6.2 to 3 percent, according to the report, which stated that business confidence was beginning to rise from 99 in the third quarter to 101.6 points in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Minister-designate for Business Development, Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, said Wednesday that the government was set to improve the regulatory framework of registering businesses in the country.

With regard to the current regulatory framework that posed a hindrance to business registration, Awal said that New Patriotic Party (NPP) government would review the registration regime and encourage the private sector to expand operations.

Awal said if his nomination as minister were approved by parliament, the Ministry for Business development would "work to facilitate a new regime that would enhance the speedy registration of all businesses and aid in accessing funds". Endit