Chief Executive Officer of the Private Enterprise Federation, Nana Osei Bonsu, is urging businesses to capitalize on the new services charter rolled out to demand accountability from state institutions responsible for the issuance of relevant business documentation.
The Charter has been created together with the Environmental Protection Agency, Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority and the Factories Inspectorate Division, to reduce delays, and in some cases extortion by officers during the acquisition of licenses.
Nana Osei Bonsu told Citi Business News he’s hopeful the approach to name and shame will get the right things done for businesses to grow.
“With this new Charter, if you go there and you are asked to come back in two days, and it isn’t so, go back there to see if they will do as stated in the Service Charter, and then we also follow up on part of the agencies. What is the private sector demanding? Are they courteous? And the other thing is structure. Who keeps the fees? It is important to allow the resources to enable them to provide the services,” he said.
The latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business ranking shows that Ghana has dropped from 114 in 2019 to 118 in 2020.
This among other things, led the Private Enterprise Federation, PEF, together with the three state institutions, to develop a new services charter aimed at improving the ease of doing business.
Among other things, PEF in a survey cited the delays in acquiring permits from such institutions as partly responsible for the payment of bribes to simplify the issuance of relevant documents.
The partners are hopeful Ghana could improve in its ranking in the ease of doing business with a change in service delivery times.
Clara Kasser Tee, Consultant to the Service Charter project said it will eliminate corruption.
“To improve and eliminate to the barest minimum administrative corruption, we definitely have to work on eliminating the delays. In this, transparency is key. So when you have an efficient service delivery charter, you know the fees because the fees are stated in there, you know the requirements because there is a checklist in there, the documents that you are looking at, and you also know the services that you provide so there is no situation where you go to this agency and you are tossed about.”