Ghana to incentivise investments that bring value-addition – Yofi Grant
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Yofi Grant, has told investors that the Government of Ghana (GoG) henceforth, is going to incentivise investments that result in value-addition to goods produced in the country.
According to Mr Grant, this is because the Government of Ghana is now looking at competing as an exporter of finished goods.
“We have the resources and we need investment, but we are only going to incentivise investments that lead to value addition of resources such that we are now also able to compete as an exporter of finished goods that are required elsewhere,” said Mr Grant speaking at the Dubai Expo 2020 AIM Conference themed Global Value Chain Optimisation.
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Making further arguments for government’s decision to incentivise value-addition investments, Mr Grant said, “Now as the second largest cocoa producer in the world, we are saying that we are going to limit the amount of cocoa beans that we export. But we are going to increase and incentivise value-addition in Ghana, such that we have better value on products produced in the country.
“We have significant resources, an example is bauxite resources which means we can export bauxite, but now it is just not enough to export bauxite in its raw state, you have to convert it into aluminium which is the higher form in the value chain and which will bring the country more revenue, and that’s what we want to do now.”
Ghana is known to incentivise foreign investments with huge tax exemptions which cost the country billions of dollars in revenue.
In more recent times, given the country’s inability to raise enough tax revenue to meet its growing expenditure, the government has re-laid before Parliament, the tax exemption bill which seeks to now reduce to the minimum, tax exemptions given foreign companies and rake in more revenue for national development.
