Business confidence in Ghana has declined to the lowest in the last five years.
This is according to the Business barometer report released by the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) for the second quarter of 2014.
The business barometer report measures the level of confidence in the business environment and predicts short-term business trend.
The second quarter of the year recorded a decline in the confidence index to a little over 22 points. This represents a 78 points shortfall from the base index of a hundred.
In the first quarter of the year, the index dropped from 102 recorded the last quarter of 2013 to 90. At that time it was the lowest confidence level recorded since 2010.
Speaking to Citi Business News, James Asare Agyei said “businesses continue to incur huge foreign exchange losses, while industry continues to shrink. With the rising cost of doing businesses risk shutting down if the trend persist.”
According to him, the Barometer report, decline in confidence is a result of the fast depreciation of the cedi and multiplicity of taxes with non-availability of power.
By: Norvan Acquah–Hayford/citifmonline.com/Ghana