He said government was injecting 10 million dollars as a seed-capital into the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP) which was launched recently to support start-up and early-stage businesses.

The NEIP is also expected to raise additional 100 million dollars in private capital and multilateral funding to fund its programmes which include business development services, incubator hubs and business accelerator services. 

Presenting a 61-page Mid-Year Budget for 2017 in Parliament on Monday, Mr Ofori-Atta says the NEIP would be managed by a Private Sector Implementation Partner, which would be incepted in three weeks.     

“It is envisaged that NEIP will have several self-contained modules on ICT, Tourism, Agriculture, Health and other similar critical areas that will be managed by subject-area specialists,” the Finance Minister said.    

He explained that this is to ensure value-creation and youth employment to reduce the unemployment rate.    

He said as part of its effort to improve the business environment for investments, government had launched a comprehensive programme for business regulatory reform to make the country business-friendly. 

The reform, he said, aims at improving Ghana’s rankings on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index and to establish an electronic register for business regulations, legislation and processes which would provide a complete repository of business laws and regulations.   

It will also help in conducting a rolling review of business regulations and develop a centralised web portal which will provide an interactive platform for public consultations.   

The design targets regulatory reliefs for Small and Medium Enterprises in order to reduce entry barriers for young entrepreneurs and start-ups and seeks to establish Regulatory Reform Units within MDAs to conduct Regulatory Impact Assessments.  

Mr Ofori-Atta said this would lead to the creation of a permanent system of quality control for the introduction of new business regulations.