The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku has charged the Ghana Investment Promotions Centre to make procedures for investing in the country less cumbersome. In this direction, the GIPC is to streamline registration processes by reducing the level of bureaucracy.

The Centre is also to eliminate rules and procedures that engender corruption. Dr Apraku spelt out these new measures for the government’s investment marketing agency when he launched the 2001 World Investment Report in Accra on Tuesday.

The Minister said these measures have become necessary because the goodwill shown government by the international community and the difficult choices that government has made are not enough to increase the stock of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in the country.

Foreign direct investment inflows into the country saw a 52.5 percent decline last year while global inflows of FDIs soared by 18 percent to a record 1.3 trillion dollars. However, according to the World 2001 Investment report, Global FDIs for this year are expected to decline. The African continent’s share of FDIs amounted to less than one percent, according to the report.