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01.07.2006 Business & Finance

Government, Private Sector Need Collaboration – GNCCI President

01.07.2006 LISTEN
By GNA

The President of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI), Mr Wilson Atta Krofah, has called for greater collaboration between the government and the business community to accelerate the country's development agenda.

Such a collaboration, he said, should ensure continuous dialogue to ascertain the needs of the business community in the country and also ensure that government used business associations as a channel to disseminate its policies and programmes.

Speaking in an interview, Mr Krofah said experiences from other countries such as Malaysia had shown a stronger relationship between government agencies and the business sector associations, culminating in the development of the economy.

“There is a monthly meeting between government agencies and the business sector on a continuous basis and this, we think, can be replicated here in this country to ensure the development of the economy”, he said.

Mr Krofah recently led a three-member delegation of the chamber to Malaysia to understudy their tax system in order to make an input in the reduction of corporate tax in the government's budget statement.

The chamber had undertaken a project under the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC), the Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The four-month advocacy programme is aimed at lobbying the government to further reduce corporate tax from the present 25 per cent to 20 per cent without compromising government revenue targets.

Mr Krofah said the chamber was spearheading this activity because of the competitiveness for investments throughout the world by all nations.

“The need to attract both local and foreign investments places on government the need to take steps such as a reduction in corporate tax in order to ensure investments in the economy” he said.

He said investors were looking for areas where the cost of doing business was lower and called for other tax incentives that would make the country attractive to investors.

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