President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will tomorrow lead a brand-new effort aimed at easing investor on-boarding in the country as well as reinvigorate local investments in critical sectors of the economy.

The Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who made this known at the Minister’s Press Briefing yesterday, said the aim of the summit was to revive interest in investing and at the same time, help restore economic growth as the country emerged from the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The exercise, which is a collaboration between the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) and the ministries of Information, Finance and Trade & Industry, aims at accounting for the registered Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) annually and tracking the efforts to on-boarding them fully into the economy.

He said it would focus on exploring ways of easing the bottlenecks and frustrations faced by persons who made efforts to invest in the economy.

“The President will be demanding answers from the facilitator agencies on efforts to support these investments to be fully rolled into the Ghanaian economy. He will also be hearing from investors about some of their challenges in on-boarding while leading efforts to ease the process,” he said.

Registration

In 2020, GIPC registered about $2.7 billion of investments in Ghana, comprising 279 number of projects across Agric, Industry and Services.

This comprised 129 newly registered projects, 131 upstream developments and 19 free zones activities dispersed across eight regions, with Greater Accra registering the highest number of 231 projects. Cumulatively, some 27,110 jobs are expected to be generated from the registered projects.

The one-day summit is expected to be attended by investors and potential investors on one hand as well as heads of investor facilitator agencies, the GIPC and selected ministries.

Mr Nkrumah encouraged the media to support the exercise by highlighting the success stories while focusing attention on what various stakeholders ought to do to ease the on-boarding process for investors. This is critical as part of efforts to aid the economy to robustly recover and grow beyond aid.

The summit will take place at the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel and will be carried live on various TV and online platforms. Interested persons can participate virtually too by registering at: www.sparkup.GIPC.gov.gh