Accra, June 29, GNA - The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), on Tuesday said businesses with foreign interests within the first quarter of this year registered at the Centre summed up to 37 projects estimated at an investment cost of 26.60 million US dollars.

This performance compares favourably with the record of the first quarters of the three previous years when 32 projects valued at 15.90 million US dollars in 2001, 26 projects with an investment value of 11.73 million US dollars in 2002 and 39 projects provisionally estimated at 56.70 million US dollars in 2003 were registered.

The Centre in its first quarter investment report this year on statistics on registered projects said the 37 projects registered in this quarter involved 20.52 million dollars in foreign and 6.08 million US dollars in local investments.

Initial foreign capital transfers summed up to 6.39 million US dollars, the highest recorded in any first quarter since 2001. There were 20 joint foreign-Ghanaian enterprises valued at 19.22 million US dollars and 19 wholly foreign-owned projects (including two liaison offices) estimated to cost 7.38 million US dollars in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

According to the report the Centre received 18 investment delegations on site visits from 10 countries involving 33 potential investors from the United Kingdom, Italy, Denmark, USA, Canada and The Netherlands.

From the developing countries some of the investors came from India, Israel, South Africa and South Korea.

The main areas of interest were manufacturing, general trading, real estate development/construction, agro-processing, consultancy services and tourism.

The Centre has formally started the implementation of the new five-year Corporate Plan that is designed to enhance its client relation strategies and to direct attention to firms that will process the natural and agricultural materials in the country for the sub-regional ECOWAS markets.

The report said, "It is hoped that this strategy will further enhance the promotional efforts of the Centre for increased performance.

"Until the results begin to show, however, there have been significant improvements in FDI transactions particularly between 2001 and 2003 when 461 projects valued at 280.81 million US dollars in foreign and local investments were recorded".

From September 1994 to date 1,582 projects had been recorded and they were mainly in the services, the manufacturing and tourism sectors. "These FDI related projects comprised 1,073 joint foreign-Ghanaian and 509 wholly foreign-owned projects estimated to cost 1,915.93 billion US dollars of which 1,577.19 billion US dollars were foreign capital (526.58 million US dollars equity and 1,050.61 million US dollars loans) and 339.76 million dollars local funding in equity (239.49 million US dollars) and loans (99.27 million US dollars).

Joint Foreign-Ghanaian projects were initially capitalised at 1,354 billion US dollars whilst wholly foreign owned projects were estimated to cost 561.00 million US dollars.

The report said "these investments were projected to generate employment opportunities for 79,989 Ghanaians and 5,181 non-Ghanaians. "Initial foreign capital transfers in respect of the minimum required under the GIPC Act amounted to 232.21 million US dollars. There has also been registered a total of 111 liaison offices".

It said the major sources of foreign investments into the country were Great Britain (164 projects), India (155 projects), China (141 projects), USA (120 projects), Germany, (99 projects).

Others are Korea (62 projects), Italy (57 projects), Netherlands (56 projects), Switzerland (49 projects), France (37 projects) and Canada (33 projects. Sources of investments from the developing countries include Nigeria (46), South Africa (29) and Malaysia (12). 29 June 04