People looking to create businesses are to receive a major boost as the government prepares to introduce an entrepreneurship framework.

The policy, which will provide a comprehensive direction to drive business creation and sustainability, will provide the necessary linkages between academia and industry and is being championed by the Ministry of Business Development.

“We have just completed an entrepreneurship framework for Ghana, and we will be taking it through a stakeholder engagement in the next few weeks. This is crucially important because Ghana is recognised as a very entrepreneurial country, and recent data from the MasterCard Index for Entrepreneurship indicated that Ghana is leading globally in the number of women who are entrepreneurs,” Acting Chief Director at the ministry, Joe Tackie, told the B&FT.

Mr. Tackie, who said the policy will help most businesses to survive well beyond their founders by providing the right framework and legal environment, spoke in Accra at the Dutch Export Academy – a programme to help exporters take advantage of opportunities in The Netherlands and European market as a whole.

He noted that: “All these years, we have never had a comprehensive entrepreneurship policy to drive the creation of business.

“The issue is that the core competences we need as entrepreneurs are very important and we must have a critical mass of quality entrepreneurs – very savvy ones, who will always see a lot of opportunities in the midst of the chaos that we complain about day-to-day. This is what we need to overcome as a people, so that we have a paradigm shift from a factor-dependent economy to a more prosperous one.

“We have enormous amounts of raw materials and natural resources, but until we change our mindset by adding value to these resources and developing very innovative products and services, we are not going to go anywhere with our wealth issues,” he added.

The Dutch Export Academy training, organised by the Ghana-Netherlands Business and Culture Council (GNBCC), saw about 30 participants trained in areas such as: Export Planning, Export Process and Documentation, Product Packaging and Design, Marketing & Branding, Finance & Investment, among others.

“We need to build capacity to be able to discover new markets and penetrate new global chains, but we cannot do this if we do not have the requisite knowledge and data; and that is why believe this intervention by the GNBCC is very, very timely,” Mr. Tackie further said.

The Dutch Ambassador to Ghana, Ron Strikker, said his country is committed to improving economic relations with Ghana, especially in the area of trade and investments.

“The Embassy is here to take care of the interests of Dutch citizens in Ghana and the interests of the Dutch private sector, but if you bring it down you find the economic coperation that we have had for 30 to 40 years in Ghana – which is now a little bit in transition to the ‘from aid to trade’ agenda,” he said.

He added: “Our main mission is to help Ghana to become prosperous, to become wealthy with most people having decent jobs and lives.

“We would like to see a stable and prosperous Africa, and that means a stable and prosperous West Africa – and for that matter, a stable and prosperous Ghana,” Mr. Strikker added.

The Ambassador however noted that the Embassy places emphasis on responsible economic growth. which he said does not cause damage to the environment.