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President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia leaving the conference room after the event
President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia leaving the conference room after the event

Veep calls for more collaboratio between Ghanaian and Maltese businesses

The Vice-President, Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, has called for a strong, thriving and mutually beneficial collaboration between Ghanaian and Maltese businesses to take advantage of opportunities in each other’s countries.

The Vice-President, who was speaking at the Ghana-Malta Business Forum to engage entrepreneurs in Accra yesterday, said the government was confident that Maltese investors would find Ghana a welcome home, a place to do business and especially as a base from where to invest in the rest of Africa.

“The government, under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has declared that we want to make Ghana not only the most people-friendly country in Africa but also the most business-friendly country in Africa,” he added.

He said the government had moved quickly, since it came into power six months ago, to put flesh to the idea of making Ghana the most business friendly country in Africa, so that “we can get the private sector moving”.

Dr Bawumia said one of the key ways to make Ghana the most business friendly country in Africa was to ensure and sustain macroeconomic stability, saying tnat without macroeconomic stability the country would not go far.

“We also want to make it very clear that the era of reckless borrowing is over, and with this tight fiscal discipline, government borrowing will reduce and that means we will create the space for the private sector not to be crowded out and get more access to finance,” he said.

Removal of taxes

 Vice-President Bawumia said the government was moving away from the focus on taxation to production, hence the removal of about 15 nuisance taxes in the 2017 budget.

  “We do like tax revenue, but we want businesses to make the revenue first before we tax them; we do not want to tax them before they make the revenue. So it is a philosophical change and I think we are moving in the right direction on this issue,” he added.

   He said the government had embarked on extensive investments in hard and soft infrastructure that placed Ghana at the heart of trade and investment flows in the region, with the view to making Ghana the logistics, transportation, financial, industrial, oil and gas; and trade hub in the West African sub-region.

Maltese President

The visiting Maltese President, Mrs Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, said like Ghana, Malta was politically stable and had been registering significant progress over the years.

She said her presence in Ghana with the Maltese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotions was a testimony to the strong and growing bilateral relations between her country and Ghana.

She added that it was also evidence of Malta’s willingness to enhance the friendship that existed between the two countries.

“We come to Ghana with a message of friendship, with the political will and the determination to transform our excellent diplomatic relations into effective business collaborations and partnerships for the benefit of our respective business communities and for the prosperity of our two nations,” she added.

She said the growing relationship between the two countries across the social, economic and political spheres of influence was now even stronger with the opening of the Ghana High Commission in Malta, with a resident High Commissioner.

She said the establishment of a Malta-Ghana Joint Technical Commission was another important development in the relations between the two countries.

Mrs Preca noted that both countries were committed to the areas of human resource development and education, adding that Ghana’s health sector provided an opportunity for the Maltese government to take advantage of.

She called on stakeholders from both countries to exchange ideas so as to continue to provide development for their various countries to better the lives of their peoples.

“We must continue to strengthen cultural and economic ties and the values that bring the two countries together,” she added.

Memoranda of Understanding

 Meanwhile, the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) have signed separate memoranda of understanding with their Maltese counterparts.

The Maltese President was in the country for a three-day State Visit and led a delegation of business people exploring opportunities for investment in Africa.

She and her spouse visited Kumasi yesterday, where she paid a courtesy call on the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, at the Manhyia Palace, and the Hope X Change Medical Centre, an 80-bed hospital initiated by Malta.

President Preca also visited Cape Coast and the Osu Children’s Home and took part in a business forum in Accra. 

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