Lawyer advocates creation of Ministry of Business
A Lawyer and council member of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Mr David Ofosu-Darte, has advocated the creation of a ministry for business to formulate and implement policies that would make Ghanaian businesses competitive at the world stage.
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Mr Ofosu-Darte, therefore, called on the private sector to lead the way in advocating the ministry to help remove the barriers that businesses faced. He was speaking at a public forum organised by the AGI to discuss how the Ghanaian private sector could be made more relevant and competitive in Africa.
The forum, which had the topic: “Business competitiveness – Is the Ghanaian Private Sector its Own Enemy?” brought together people from different business communities.
Mr Darte said “If we want to compete, we must compete at the international stage. Private-sector indiscipline and poor attitude to time must be checked.”
Removal of bottlenecks
He said Ghanaian creativity and ingenuity would be properly channelled into strong business empires if, under a ministry of business, bottlenecks relating to cost of capital and access to capital were removed. He, therefore, called for a review of the Partnership Act which puts a ceiling on the number of partnerships a business could engage in.
“The Partnership Law has prevented businesses from growing. It puts the limit for partnership at 20 people, which does not favour business development,” he said, adding that the law had outlived its usefulness.
He said it was in the light of this that there was the need for the private sector to advocate a ministry of business so that they could lobby for the favourable review of such laws.
Mr Darte noted that if there was no ministry to deal with issues of business and create a conducive business atmosphere for local businesses, local products would be branded as foreign.
He charged local entrepreneurs to pool their resources and invest in the education, health, tourism, and other sectors, which are gradually being eclipsed by foreigners.
Management to blame
A former President of AGI, Dr Tony Oteng Gyasi, blamed the management of Ghanaian businesses for non-performance and non-competitiveness.
According to him, managers of businesses in the country do not inculcate the passion of adhering to best practices in their employees, hence the mediocrity in the business environment.
He also said the numerous universities in the country produced students with theoretical knowledge and so, the onus lay on business managers to transform this knowledge into practical business skills to propel the growth of the private sector.
