The Private Enterprise Federation (PEF) has questioned the capacity of the 2015 Budget to help diversify the economy and promote exports.
This is despite government’s plan in the 2015 budget to set up an Export-Import (EXIM) Bank to position Ghana as an export led economy.
[contextly_sidebar id=”tLOoTMa927MQ0Wl8WAeFjmmdqrwHpCyD”]According to PEF the cost and availability of utilities, cost of loans and inflation among others don’t favor businesses to venture into manufacturing and exportation of value added goods.
The Chief Executive Officer of PEF Nana Osei Bonsu said, “I would want to see a lot more emphasis in the provision of the things that will allow us to increase production to be able to facilitate export trading, I don’t see much in the budget.”
He bemoaned that the erratic electricity supply across the country was going to worsen this year.
” there is prediction of especially the power outages. Unless we address that big animal we won’t be able to do much… for the short term what do we have in place.”
“There must be a dialogue opportunity for both private sector and government…government doesn’t invest, private sector invests and unless we do that (dialogue) the investments are not going to come”, he stressed.
He spoke to Citi Business News on the sidelines of the launch of the 3rd annual conference on Ghana’s Economic outlook and business strategy to be organized by the Africa Business Media.
The conference is under the theme “Diversifying Ghana’s Economy through sustained export trade”.
By: Rabiu Alhassan/citifmonline.com/Ghana