Tema-Ghana, Nov. 14, GNA – Mr. Kenneth Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of Dalex Finance, has called on the government to restore investor confidence to boost the local economy.
He said, “investors’ confidence is boosted when news about the future is good and stock prices rise.”
Mr Thompson emphasized that “if people continue to lose confidence in the economy, coupled with the increase in the price of fuel, the dollars would continue to fly out, and not having enough supply would in turn lead to the crash of the cedi.”
Mr. Thompson was speaking at the 17th edition of the Monthly Stakeholders Engagement and Workers’ appreciation day organized by the Ghana News Agency’s Tema Regional Office, which aimed at providing a platform for both state and non-state organizations to address national issues to enhance development.
Speaking on the topic: “Navigating through the current Economic Crisis,” Mr Thompson called for pragmatic efforts to deal with the nation’s economic challenges.
He advocated improved tax collection as one of the measures to improve investor confidence in the country’s economy.
He said the inability of the country to collect more revenue to fund its budget was a contributing factor to the many reasons why Ghana was having a vicious cycle of going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) severally without any permanent solution.
Mr Thompson indicated that it was not enough to introduce new taxes such as the E-levy while the implementation and collection of existing ones were not being effectively done.
He also questioned the rationale for giving foreign entities huge tax exemptions annually.
On the impact of COVID-19 and the Russian/Ukraine war on the Ghanaian economy, Mr Thompson noted that it had compounded the economic difficulties.
He said, “Ghana was at the edge of the cliff; COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war just gave us a pat, and we straightforward summersault into the bottomless economic pit”.
He explained that all the factors put together led to the downgrading of the country’s debt rating which subsequently pushed investors to take their monies out of the country as they lost confidence in the economy.
Mr. Francis Ameyibor, Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Manager explained that the event aimed at providing a platform for both state and non-state organizations to address national issues to enhance development.
