As part of government’s desire to make the country the most business-friendly in Africa, a new initiative has been launched to make it possible for businesses to be registered within a day.
The initiative dubbed: “Three-year Business Regulatory Strategy,” is aimed at modernising the quality of Ghana’s legal and regulatory systems to promote faster growth, job creation and economic prosperity.
Prior to this initiative, obtaining a certificate to commence business could take about two weeks.
A research by the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF) noted that there are at least 145 permits, certificates and licensing requirements across various sectors of the Ghanaian business landscape, adding that, out of the 145 permits and licenses required prior to the start of business operations in Ghana, six apply to all businesses regardless of their sector of operation.
However, the reforms introduced by the Registrar-General’s Department (RGD) has slashed it drastically to one day.
Commenting on the new initiative, Domtie Afua Sarpong, Assistant Registrar at the RGD, said deliberate steps have been taken by her outfit to ease processes to help facilitate registration of businesses.
“If all the documents are a complete, it will take a day to complete registering your business at the Registrar-General’s Department. At first, it could go up to two weeks before you could get it registered. Now we have made reforms that will make it possible to register your business in a day.
At first the company inspectors were not those who verified the documents. Some other people verified before it had to come back to the company inspectors to do the formal examination; but now the company directors do all straightforward,” she said.
She further stated that the department has outsourced some services in order to ease pressure on the limited staff and address the challenges with the online registration in order to hasten processes.
“We want to declutter the system and give very good customer service. We launched the online registration in 2015 but we had challenges with the payment system, so it was not effective. But now we have looked for another service provider who has introduced a reliable payment system for us,” she added.
In addition to reducing the number of days it takes to register a business, there has been a reduction in the processing time for the conduct of title search at the Land’s Commission from 14 to 5 days.
Again, there have been a streamlining of transmission of application to the Electricity Company of Ghana for estimates from Regional Director to the Director of Engineering.
Furthermore, the government’s technical partner for the implementation of the Ghana National Single Window project –West Blue Consulting—is currently working with key stakeholders in both the private and public sectors to fast-track trade facilitation processes at the ports with a view to improving the turn-around time at the ports.
Also commenting on the initiative, Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan K. Kyerematen, said government is bent on making the private sector lead its ambitious industrialisation agenda, hence, the launch of the programme.
“Government has ambitious programme for industrialisation, and this is all targeted at making Ghana the most business friendly in Africa. For the private sector to participate in this programme, we need to make the business environment friendly. If the business environment is not supportive of businesses, we cannot achieve our objectives under this initiative.
If you take this exercise (Business Regulatory Reform), we have identified four areas of reform which we discussed today. They are starting a business, getting electricity, dealing with construction permits, and trading across borders. Reforms have already been initiated in these areas and actions are being taken,” he said.
Source: thebftonline.com