“The interest shown is high and we expect the countries and businesses making the enquiries to come in to invest big in the economy within the shortest possible time”, he told the Daily Graphic in Accra over the weekend.

This was after he had received delegations from the Chinese Embassy in Ghana, Malta and the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful investment firms with $178 billion of assets.

Speaking about the various discussions, he said, as a follow up to the visit by the Vice-President and business people to China last month, that country had affirmed its determination to expand relationship boundaries with Ghana from trade to sustainable partnerships.

“China wants to empower Ghanaian businesses to go global. China also wants to lead the role in transforming the economy”, he said.

Mr Grant said there was good evidence of how China had empowered and energised its business people to grow and go global and “they want to teach Ghana to do same. This can be achieved with partnerships with foreign capital.”

He said the discussion with the delegation from Malta centred on how that country could help develop top-level training and investment relationships with Ghana to enable it to access the ECOWAS and European markets.

Mr Grant said those from the Carlyle Group also discussed possible areas of interests, including energy, infrastructure and agriculture.
He expressed confidence that these would yield the needed results for the country because the goodwill was high.

FDIs in Q1

In the first quarter of this year alone, GIPC registered more than $3 billion worth of projects. The achievement gives hope to achieving the $5 billion target set for the year.

This translates into 49 newly registered projects out of which the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) component of the estimated value of registered projects was $2.95 billion. The remaining amount came from indigenous projects.

Mr Grant had earlier explained that the first quarter had been an exciting period for the GIPC following the initiation and commencement of some critical business-friendly policies and projects of the new political administration.

He said some of the government’s innovative policies and programmes such as the “one-district, one-factory”, “planting for food and jobs,” Accra marine drive” project and improved tax system in the 2017 Budget Statement had boosted investor confidence, leading to the influx of visits by potential investors in the first quarter.