The Chinese Development Bank has advanced part of the $3.00 billion loan for government to continue with the construction of the Ghana Gas Company, President John Dramani Mahama has announced.
He said although the restoration of the West African Gas Pipeline would provide adequate gas for the country to achieve its power supply, there was the need to complete the Ghana Gas Company project to make the country self-sufficient and a net exporter of the commodity.
President Mahama announced this during his initial remarks before holding a closed-door meeting with members of the Private Sector Advisory Council, headed by Dr Kwesi Botchwey, a former Minister for Finance and Economic Planning on Saturday.
The Council, which was established by the President a few months ago, is mandated to coordinate all activities pertaining to business between government and the private sector in the country.
The members, who would also discuss the challenges confronting business and device long lasting solutions to those challenges, are made up of representatives from the Association of Ghana Industries, the Ghana Chamber of Mines, the Ghana Group of Publishers, the Ghana Exporters Association among others.
President Mahama announced that in view of the economic challenges in the country, government had initiated certain measures to ameliorate the situation in the coming months.
He said the government would soon hold a forum with organised labour to fine-tune the way forward in the rising wage bills as a result of the implementation of the single spine salary structure.
The President said government would soon fix the energy challenges that would ensure regular power supply to make businesses comfortable in their operations, raise the levies on some inputs among other measures and appealed to the public to bear with government as those measures were geared towards enhancing the needed development in the country.
He said credit, which had also become a major hindrance to business, would be discussed at length to make businesses comfortable to operate freely.
President Mahama said the time had come for government to inject seriousness in the support of businesses to grow and promised to draw measures that would stem the influx of cheaper goods that crowd the Ghanaian businesses.
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