Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC) has resolved to rope in investors with strategic ambitions of helping the country develop long term in infrastructure, power and medium to long term processing facilities, CEO of the Center, Mawuena Trebarh stated.
She further explained that the quality of investments will help the country meet the IMF conditions: “Yes there are current constraints that businesses are facing because of the conditions that the IMF partnership has requested of us as a country, but as GIPC we have to take a strategic view of what investments are required, and it is the quality of the investments that will support us to meet those IMF obligations and that is our focus” she said.
GIPC for the long term intends to push for investments or partnerships that would yield long term sustainable benefits to the country. Mrs Trebarh says “for instance if it is the power sector what specific project in the medium to long term will support the agenda to ensure we achieve our target 5,000mw by the end of next year”.
“We look beyond the present, we look at things in five years-10-20 period of time because strategically that is where Ghana is now. Most of our investment has to be in power, infrastructure, they have to be in medium to long term processing facilities, those are not things we can roll out in six months or perhaps eight”
According to the GIPC strategic and sustainable investments are what they present, not just to the domestic but the international business communities as well and actively support those partnerships that would push that agenda.
“The strategy is to continue to identify strategic projects, what’s the location, what’s the initial capital outlay, what’s kind of skills set are already in the country to support executing that investment, what GIPC has to offer to support the business community both domestic and international, so that’s the strategic view”.
They are presently taking those major projects that will help ‘to close our ease of doing business gaps and we are being very specific that they are packaged in such a way that if there are feasibility studies that have been done, what are the legal and regulatory requirements all that information is provided.”
GIPC remains upbeat that for the long haul targeted and specific investments would help the country meet various obligations and progress to the upper middle income status in spite of the short term challenges in the medium to long term.
For her, the upcoming GC 100 event will showcase excellence and invite more investors into Ghana.
Preceding the main event, GIPC in partnership with Homestrings Ltd. will also hold the Invest in Ghana 2015 Conference.
The Invest in Ghana forum would be meant to showcase the opportunities that these companies have identified and the discussions they will have had with the Ghanaian business community, “so it much more than network, it is much more than networking, both domestic and international companies would have looked at very specific projects and be discussing ways in which they can either partner to execute them or approach the GIPC on how to support them to execute.”