Mr. Charles Gassoub, West Africa Vice President, Agility Logistic Parks (ALP), says Ghana needs to take radical steps to regain its position as the best investment destination for foreign investors.
He was speaking at a breakfast meeting organized by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) and added that the country was no longer the top-notch country investors consider when trying to invest.
“Ghana was the priority for most of the customers, but today, Ghana has slowed down for several reasons, and one of the reasons is that the rest of the African regions are trying to catch up with Ghana,” he stated.
Mr. Gassoub explained that this was partly due to the fact that most of the regions in Africa that were imitating Ghana were now taking steps to catch up with the country, hence the need to be innovative enough for the country to go back to its original state.
He said the country was then the friendliest in terms of business, strategically positioned in the middle of West Africa, coupled with secured political stability, which lured most investors to reach out to the country to invest.
He mentioned that the conducive atmosphere in Ghana was one of the reasons why the Agility Company ventured into the country for business before targeting other African countries.
He added that the company, since its inception, had been mentoring and training some businesses in Africa to meet international standards for businesses since most investors were quite skeptical about meeting the right people for investment.
The West Africa Director, ALP, said the Agility company funds and builds to the customer’s specifications, where the price would be incorporated into a lease of about ten to 15 years. “In a way, we’ll be acting like a bank with no interest.”
He said the company had built the biggest Amazon warehouse in Egypt, stressing that technology was also expanding and changing the dynamics of wholesale and retail business, and cautioning that it was about time Africans put things into perspective for the development of the continent.