Frank Agyekum, the Executive Secretary of Ghana International Trade Commission [M1] (GITC) has expressed optimism for Ghanaian businesses post elections.

According to him, the country has endeared itself in maintaining a peaceful election, a phenomenon he reckons most investors look at when considering countries to invest in.

“Undoubtedly, this election has been one of the best organized in Ghana so far. The election itself, the process was so seamless… what this has done for Ghana is to show the whole world that this is the right place to do business. You can put your investment here and be sure that you have the safety and the genuineness and soundness to conduct business without any disturbances coming your way”.

Juxtaposing Ghana’s smooth elections to other choppy ones conducted in other countries, he noted that, what sets the country apart is its ability to provide the stability investors demand to transact business.

“Many of these businesses who have had long term projections and long term business connections and activities and undertakings with other businesses abroad… when it happens so they don’t only lose in the country but they lose also in terms of profit making and credibility because they are unable to meet the target that they set; and starting all over again it becomes a problem”.

Contrarily, he noted that when it comes to Ghana we have proven to be a “very stable, progressive and sound place to do business.

Touching on the future of trade and investment on the side of GITC and the country at large moving forward, he stated that response from investors have been quite positive.

“Very positive in the sense that we have shown that we are a very stable and very sound country to invest and anybody coming in at all will be guaranteed and will be assured of the fact that they are not investing in any country where for reasons of instability, they are going to lose their profit. It also shows that, the government already through President Nana Addo has put in measures to safeguard the investment of any of the industries that come in here such as Ghana International Trade commission, to make sure unfair trade practices are not countenanced in this country and all the other measures that we put in place industrially in terms of 1D1F, business for Agriculture are going to come into being because we will have more time to do a lot of the things that we said we were going to do.

“If we were doing and all those were truncated, then of course we’ll go back to zero but now we are beginning to get in there, we are going to continue. As the president said, he is going to start from day one to work as we did before and when the projections in this country in terms of private investment, in terms of industrialization, both locally and internationally are going to come into being and I’m sure that within the shortest space of time, we’ll see the prosperity that all Ghanaians are looking for”.

[M1]