The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has disclosed that it has strengthened its monitoring to clamp down on businesses that forge documents in the registration of their operations.
The Centre is currently pursuing some of such cases in court which may lead to the prosecution of persons found culpable.
Though the issue has largely been associated with some expatriate businesses, some Ghanaians are said to have been complicit in the act.
The CEO of the GIPC, Yofi Grant who disclosed this also says the move have affected actual FDIs into Ghana for some time now.
He was speaking at the fourth quarterly meetings by the GIPC for CEOs in Ghana for this year.
“There are a number of them in court already and just last week we discovered two more cases of false documentation and so we are working assiduously to clamp down on all these things. We are also making sure that our monitoring team is a bit more aggressive and making sure that we go through all the shops to make sure that people are properly registered and properly engaged to do business here.”
Mr. Grant also fears the development if unchecked, could negatively impact plans to reposition Ghana as the most attractive investment destination.
“This is a very friendly business environment and it doesn’t mean that people should take advantage of it and abuse it. We are in a country that upholds the rule of law and we need to make sure it works,” he added.
The quarterly meetings are geared at allowing the businesses outline key issues impeding their operations and find solutions to them.
For this year [2017], the GIPC is seeking to raise 5 billion dollars in FDIs.
For the first nine months of the year, the Centre recorded some 4.3 billion dollars in FDIs.
It is however confident of meeting the target by the end of the year.
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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
