Accra, May 23, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor on Friday granted audience to the Group Chairman of CL Financial Limited, a Caribbean-based investment giant, Mr. Lawrence A. Duprey, at the Castle, Osu.

The group, with an assets base of 30 billion dollars is into finance, energy, the hospitality industry, real estate development and manufacturing.

It currently operates some 70 businesses in more than 60 countries including the United States, France and the United Kingdom (UK). Ghana happens to be the first country in Africa, where it has expressed the desire to do business and has already acquired 400 acres of land at Winneba to build a chain of five-star hotels. President Kufuor said the nation was ready for those who came in as genuine partners.

He noted that it was easier for businesses to make returns in Africa now than they could anywhere else and encouraged particularly companies owned by Africans in the Diaspora that were making it big to look more to the Continent.

"You should look to Africa to see what can be done to help lift the Continent into the mainstream of globalization." Mr Duprey endorsed the view that Africa was indeed the place to invest, describing it as "the next place of rapid development in the world".

He said they were convinced that it would be easier for them "to grow here" than in the US and other developed parts of the world.