The capital requirement of 500,000 and 200,000 dollars set by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) for wholly owned-for­eign companies and joint venture companies, respectively, would be revised under the proposed GIPC Amendment Bill, 2023, the Director, Legal Division, GIPC, Mrs Naa Lamle Orleans-Lindsay, has said.

According to her, the revi­sion of the capital require­ment would help encourage foreign investment into the country and drive econom­ic growth and develop­ment.

However, she said that the capital requirement of $1million for trading enter­prises set by the GIPC would be maintained to protect the local economy.

“The proposal for the revision of the GIPC Act, 2013 (Act 865) is to remove entirely the capital requirement for wholly-owned foreign companies and joint venture companies and leave the capital requirement for trading,” Mrs Orleans-Lindsay said.

Mrs Orleans-Lindsay said this in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of an engagement with stakeholders in the banking sector, including the Bank of Ghana (BoG) in Accra yesterday.

The purpose of the stakeholder engagement that was organised by the GIPC was to explain to them some of the key changes that were expect­ed to be seen in the proposed revision of the GIPC Act, 2013 (Act 865) in relation to Technology Transfer Agreement (TTA).

The TTA is a legally binding contract outlining the terms of transferring knowledge, technol­ogy, or intellectual property from a foreign entity (Transferor) pro­viding a service or right to a local entity (Transferee).

Mrs Orleans-Lindsay explained that the GIPC Amendment Bill, 2023, when passed into law, would help in streamlining the process­es of registering, monitoring, and keeping records of TTAs by GIPC.

She added that the GIPC had taken notice of the various con­cerns raised by its stakeholders and clients with regards to TTAs, and therefore assured them that those concerns would be resolved once the GIPC Amendment Bill, 2023, was passed into law.

Mrs Orleans-Lindsay said that his outfit would liaise with other regulators in the various sectors of the economy to ensure that the streamlining of the processes of TTAs were harmonised to the benefit of clients and stakeholders with many regulators.

“The law requires that approv­al of regulators are received by GIPC. Now, these regulators are varied across various sectors, and they may take a bit of time to reverse to us. And without receiv­ing those approvals, we can not continue with our process, which causes frustrations to our investors and clients,” she elaborated.

For his part, the head of the TTA Department, GIPC, Mr Emmanuel Osei, said compliance with the GIPC law in relation to the registration of TTA with the GIPC by companies had been positive.

However, he said that the failure on the part of companies to com­ply with such a law was a breach of the GIPC Act, 2013 (Act 865) and Technology Transfer Regula­tion 1992 (L.I. 1547).

According to Mr Osei, such companies would be liable to a summary conviction and, there­fore, warned them to desist from it.

He said that the GIPC may revoke, cancel, or suspend the reg­istration of such a company and also advise the BoG to suspend any remittances and incentives that were granted to a company that fail to register their TTA with the GIPC.