The Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI) is calling for donor support to assist in covering the cost of acquiring critical data for its operations.
GNCCI says the support will enable it to inform Ghanaians on the bottom-up decision on government policies.
The President of the Chamber, Clement Osei-Amoako, made the request while speaking at a stakeholders’ workshop on advocacy action on the theme, ‘Mobilizing business diagnostics data to inform bottom-up decision on government policies”.
The Business advocacy project contains research findings and policy recommendations critical for business and industry growth, value, resilience, and sustainability.
Speaking at the workshop, Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, said the document will go a long way to facilitate growth for industry players.
“It’s important to say that Industry contracted the most and industry contracted by 5.7%. So the 3.4% contraction was mainly driven by industry as it contracted by 5.7%. And within the industry sector, the lead sub-sector that led to the contraction of 5.7% is the hotel and restaurant sub-sectors and this is not surprising because of the implications of the restrictions that were imposed. So in as much as BUSAC Fund has given this opportunity to the GNCCI to do this business diagnostic analysis, it is important as the president said, to engage more with the data,” he expressed.
The Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry with help from the BUSAC Fund, over the years, has put together business advocacy projects in collaboration with key stakeholders including: ‘Advocating the Establishment of a Commodity Exchange Mechanism’; ‘Streamlining the Duty Drawback Process’; and ‘Advocacy to Improve Efficiency and Reduce the Cost of Doing Business at the Ports of Ghana’.
The latest, “Mobilizing Business Diagnostics Data to Inform Bottom-Up Decision on Government Policies”, comes at a time when members of the GNCCI have been heavily hit by the Coronavirus Pandemic.
The President of the Chamber believes that, with the right funding, this project will equip the Chamber with business and industry insights to shape government policies and programmes as well as multilateral support in ensuring a favourable business climate.
“We want to ask for more donor-funding to take care of the cost of getting the data for proper implementations, so you can reason on those lines and come to our aid. We want to make more engagement into the future for the sustainable growth of this economy. If we are able to do that, then we are also going to reduce inefficiency, and we’ll take proper risk when we are doing any business, reduce poverty and at the end of it all, we create employment for the youth of this nation”, he said.
