Despite efforts aimed at attracting investment into the country, the Ghana Investment Promotion Center(GIPC), is yet to increase Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) in the three regions of the north compared to the Southern part of the country.
Even though the phenomenon is not new, the improvement of Foreign Direct Investment of 4.3 billion dollars in the first three quarters of the year is not far from the target of the 5 billion dollars set by the center, but the north of the country is yet to attract a substantial portion of this investment.
For instance, in the first quarter of the year, the value of FDI in the country amounted to 2.9 billion dollars.
Seven regions in the country benefited from projects from these FDIs.
They are, the Ashanti, Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions with one project each. Northern and Western regions had two, Eastern region had three, while the Greater Accra region had the highest number of projects of 39.
Upper East, Upper West and the Central regions did not attract any FDI.
The situation was worse in the second quarter even though by then, the FDI had reached 3.1 billion dollars.
This time only four regions attracted the FDIs.
They are the Ashanti, Eastern, Greater Accra and Western regions.
By the third quarter, the FDI had hit 4.3 billion dollars but the Upper East and the Upper West regions were still missing in the list despite the abundance of natural resources in those areas.
To improve the level of investment in the regions, the GIPC recently signed a Memoranda of Understating with the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) to attract investors into the region.