Minister for Business Development, Mohammed Ibrahim Awal, has beckoned to the international business community to take advantage of the thriving business environment in Ghana to invest.

According to the Minister, government is committed removing all bottle necks affecting the ease of doing business in the country, adding that Ghana “is ready and willing to do business”.

The Minister made these comments when he hosted the German Ambassador to Ghana, Christoph Retzlaff, and representatives from various German business organisations at the Ministry in Accra yesterday.

The Minister reiterated government’s commitment to help improve the business regulatory framework to help improve the ease of doing business in the country.

A key preoccupation of the business ministry is the nurturing of viable small and medium scale business with start-ups to ensure their survival in a competitive business environment.

According to the Minister, it is the vision of his ministry to create among others, viable small-and-medium scale enterprises that would be competitive on the African continent and beyond.

He noted that government will within this year grow at least four big companies out of the 20 it intends growing within a four-year period.

Christoph Retzlaff, the German Ambassador to Ghana, said the meeting was to afford the German business community to acquaint themselves with the business opportunities in the country and how the two countries could further strengthen its business relations.

“We want to bring more German investments to Ghana. We have seen some encouraging developments here, we have seen trade volumes is picking up between our two countries” he noted.

To help further deepen trade relations between the two countries, the German Ambassador mentioned the G20 initiative, which seeks to create a new partnership with Africa of which Ghana will be a beneficiary.

“Part of this partnership will be investment compacts between Ghana, the G20, the World Bank, and IMF”, he said.

In furtherance of this, he said the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has invited the president of Ghana to a conference in Berlin in June this year.
“On this occasion, we plan to give a political launch of this new investment and initiative”.

The German business representatives have shown interest in investing in areas such as agriculture, mentorship programmes for SMEs, engineering, renewable energy, among many others.