Three weeks into the operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, Economist Dr Adu Owusu Sarkodie has indicated that for Ghana to be able to take full advantage of the Agreement, ease of doing business in the country has to be significantly improved.
Economist Dr Adu Sarkordie believes that easing business processes like tax filing, business registration and the likes will better position the country to benefit significantly from the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement.
Speaking to Citi Business News, Dr Sarkodie emphasized that if those bottlenecks are addressed, the Ghanaian economy will experience significant growth soon.
“If you look at the doing business report, there are the issues of credit, electricity infrastructure, how cumbersome the registration process for a company or property, filing taxes and paying returns. All these things will make the economy competitive. So if Ghana can position itself well by addressing some of these things that I have talked about, access to credit, infrastructure development, tax filling, payment and corporate taxes, ease of registering companies, etc, if Ghana can improve on all these things that I’ve mentioned, it will position us better to reap maximum benefits from the African Continental Free Trade Area which is good.”
A World Bank report indicated that the ease of doing business in Ghana deteriorated marginally in 2020 compared to the previous year.
The World Bank in its Ease of Doing Business Report ranked Ghana at 118, representing a drop in four places in the previous year report.
What is the Ease of Doing Business report?
The Ease of Doing Business report which measures businesses’ competitiveness in 190 countries attributes Ghana’s drop to the government’s decision to convert GETFund and NHIL levies to straight taxes.
According to the World Bank, the conversion made paying taxes more complicated and more costly as they became a cost to businesses.
The World Bank Ease of Doing Business, which is a forward-looking report, in 2019 ranked Ghana at 114 with a score of 60.4 and in 2020, the country was ranked 118 with a score of 60.
About AfCFTA
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade area founded in 2018, with trade commencing as of 1 January 2021. It was created by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement among 54 of the 55 African Union nations.
The free-trade area is the largest in the world in terms of the number of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization. Accra, Ghana serves as the Secretariat of AfCFTA and was commissioned and handed over to the AU by the President of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo on August 17, 2020, in Accra.