Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you to the 2nd meeting of the Ghana Investment Advisory Council. I wish to apologize for the last minute rescheduling of the meeting and to express my appreciation to all of you, especially the overseas based members for staying on, and making the time to honour my invitation.

Let me also extend a special welcome to the four new members who have joined us today: Dr. Ereika Bennet, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Prof. Appiah-Adu and Dr. Kofi Amoah.

It has been some six months since I inaugurated the Council and today, I am expecting to be refreshed with the new ideas you have brought.

I know you are all extremely busy people, whose allocation of time for the advisory work must be managed very efficiently, and in this regared, I am anxious to ensure that the Council has not been caught in any bureaucratic bottleneck.

I want to emphasize that I want your unvarnished opinions to come to me directly without being filtered through the Ministry or any other organization. I am equally keen that the Council does not get absorbed into, nor get treated as a department or outfit of the Ministry, which, as far as your assignment goes, should serve mainly as a Post Office, or at best, a facilitator.

I do not want whatever language you choose to express your opinions in, to be refined into “official speak”, because we shall risk the essence of your messages getting lost as civil servants and other officials might seek to re-package what you have to say.

I am also anxious that you do not lose your identity and individuality. I have chosen you because I believe you, as individual personalities, can give me invaluable advice, and I appeal to you therefore to be very frank with me and the government.

The truth is that we have not got a lot of time. The Administration is already almost two years old, that is, half way through its mandate.

The situation that we inherited was dire and we need to make a dramatic difference, and lay a solid foundation for the economy in the shortest possible time.

So please do not let any bureaucratic encumbrances hold up whatever ideas you might have on what the government should do to attract Foreign Direct Investment.

Since our last meeting, government has made some strides in tackling some of the areas that we identified as hindrances to Ghana being an attractive investment destination.

As you would have noticed from the Minister’s report, the security situation has improved considerably. Morale in the Police Service has improved with the provision of vehicles and equipment. We have also embarked on a programme to increase police numbers.

The legal reforms process is also underway and with the controversy over the Fast Track Courts now resolved, commercial disputes can be settled quickly. The Companies Code has been reviewed and the updated version is due to be published shortly. The new Labour Bill is currently before Parliament; the draft Mining Law is before Cabinet. The much-debated Bank of Ghana Bill has been passed into law.

There are still some important issuers to be resolved. For example, not much progress has been made on the proposals for the establishment of an offshore banking enclave. Land reform is engaging serious attention of government but there has not yet been a breakthrough. I await your recommendations on these and other outstanding matters.

Now that you have a Secretariat, the flow of information and the networking among you should be easier. I know it takes extraordinary organization to assemble all of you busy ladies and gentlemen, but we need your input more regularly than the twice-yearly meeting that can be scheduled.

Fortunately, with modern technology, you do not all have to come to Accra for us to get the benefit of our thought. In between the regular meetings, we can get the Secretariat to arrange for us to have tele or videoconferences.

At the end of today’s meeting. I want your ideas and advice clearly put on paper for study and possible inputting into government policy.

I do of course want to see you in Accra as often as you can managed . And thank you once again for coming.

I wish you fruitful deliberations.