Speaking on Citi TV on Monday, May 6, 2024, Awuni highlighted that multinational firms, together with Glovo, Dark and Lovely, Nivea, Jumia Foods, and Bic Pens, had exited Ghana on account of an setting that was now not conducive to their progress and enlargement.
Awuni mentioned “More companies have left the country than has been announced. I have talked with them one-on-one and many of them have opened satellite offices in Cote D’Ivoire and Togo. There are some products which are from Nigeria, Togo, and Cote d’Ivoire, this is real. Clearly, the model the former finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta kept building was not meant for any economy to develop and stand and do well. It was a tax upon tax.”
“They [government] need to re-look at the tax system, they need to re-engineer our tax system to give room for the private sector to make savings, expand and create jobs. We’re in an election year, and the model this economy is building on is not a model that will let the private sector develop to create employment or make the economy expand. The government must reduce their tax system,” he famous.
He added: “Growth and Sustainability Tax, you say that an organization that posts account losses for 5 years or extra ought to pay tax on their losses, the place is it carried out in any respect? It’s fairly annoying, it’s clearly unacceptable. At the tip of the day, it’s higher for him [company] to exit. We assume that the Ghanaian economic system will endure extra as a result of many companies nonetheless need to go away.
He additionally expressed concern over the excessive value of residing in Ghana, emphasizing that life has change into insufferable for a lot of Ghanaians.
Meanwhile, a banking skilled, Dr. Richmond Atuahene, has mentioned Ghana’s banking sector depicts a sector that has been in a state of disaster for the previous ten years.
Citing the non-performing loans of Ghana’s banking sector, which have averaged roughly 16.5% over the past decade, the banking specialist emphasised that ample literature from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicated a state of affairs of a full-blown disaster in Ghana’s banking sector.
Speaking on the exit of some multinational manufacturers akin to Glovo, NIVEA, Jumia Foods, Game, Dark and Lovely, Bic, BET365, and others as a result of financial disaster, Dr. Atuahene described the transfer as worrisome.
He famous that almost all conglomerates would hesitate to conduct enterprise in Ghana as a result of nation’s unfavorable macroeconomic indicators, which pale compared to these of neighboring nations within the Sub-region.