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President Mahama says Ghana has become more attractive to investors today than it was before. According to the president claims that the economic policies and programs of his administration have brought untold hardships to the business community for which reason they are leaving the country is untrue.

The president who was speaking to GBC Twin City radio in the Western Region capital, Takoradi, on his changing lives tour said statistics by the Ghana Investment Promotions Center do not support the claim.

Reports were rife that investors were planning to exit the country because of the high cost of doing business in Ghana because of the power crisis, high inflation rate, high cost of credit and numerous crippling taxes among others and these were deteriorating the business environment.

It was reported that the situation has culminated in industrial agitations in the country’s public and private sectors has compelled many businesses to relocate to other countries within the sub region that have a more unfavorable business climate in Ghana.

According to a Finder newspaper report, Ghanaian businesses have found better prospects in countries like Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire because the currency is not suffering the way the cedi is doing.

The secretary-General of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), Mr. Solomon Kotei was reported to have said that businesses in Ghana were moving their production liens into ivory Coast and Nigeria because the Ghanaian business environment is a real threat to doing business in Ghana. He stated that almost all products of Cadbury for instance are being produced in Nigeria and other countries in West Africa,” Mr. Kotei added.

But President Mahama said the assertion is false and that the facts on the ground rather prove to the country. He said the business community have a lot of confidence in the country and that he was yet to be given any specific company that had decided to leave Ghana because of its unfavorable business climate.

“Ghana is an attractive place to do business and often we must use measurable instruments to make our point. People say Ghana has become high cost of doing business and so investments are falling, there’s no truth to it, if you go to the GIPC, Ghana is one of the few countries, emerging countries that has seen increased investment in this times when we have world economic crisis and so if Ghana was an expensive place to do business why would people still be coming to invest their monies and so it is not borne out by the facts, I hear a lot of opposition propaganda that says that companies are packing out and leaving and going to neighboring Cote d’Ivoire and several times I have asked, give me one example of a company and nobody is able to say so, you just hear companies are leaving, which companies? But its good political propaganda so people just re-echo it…I was at the CEO Executives Forum in Abidjan and Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are being commended for being the two countries in west Africa that seem to have the potential to move the sub region forward and let’s not forget that Ghana’s economy is bigger than that of Cote d’Ivoire.

Ghana’s economy is the second largest economy in West Africa after Nigeria. Cote d’Ivoire and so Ghana is a good place to do business and I know people who are happy about the business they are doing, the business confidence index which is publish by the Association of Ghana Industries is showing positive that there’s growing confidence in the economy and so the statistics showing positive that there is growing confidence in the Economy.

While Ghana’s inflation stands at 17.6 per cent (as at December 2015), that of Cote d’Ivoire is 1.3 per cent, interest rate in that country is 3.5 per cent. The 2015 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report on Cote D’Ivoire said “Cote d’Ivoire in 2012 made starting a business easier by reorganizing the court clerk’s office where entrepreneurs file their company documents.

But President Mahama said Ghana’s economy is showing signs of recovery and resilience even in the face of world economic crisis.

“The resilience of the economy is seen in the relative’s stability that we are experiencing. You know what is happening in the World. Theirs is financial crisis going on in the world and I have lived in this country all my life, in most cases where we see a collapse of commodity prices of two of our principal exports the economy has always gone into a tail spin. As I speak, we are having a collapse of two of our major exports, gold is down, oil is down and so the single major export stills sustaining the economy is cocoa but even cocoa has gone down a bit and yet the economy is not experiencing the kind of shocks it used to experience in the past and that shows you that there’s something happening in the economy.