The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is set to increase intra-African trade by some $35 billion per annum from 2022, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) has disclosed. Given the fact that the AfCFTA would ensure that the entire continent has a single market which covers a total population of 1.2 billion and…

Ghana loses about $200 million of tax revenue due to the smuggling of petroleum products and other nefarious activities in the petroleum sector every year. Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) Mr Alhassan Tampuli said those activities also cause the country to lose about $12 million from the unified petroleum price fund annually.…

The Ghana cedi has recorded its worst half-year performance since 2015 following a depreciation of 8.2%.  This is according to data from the Bank of Ghana interbank exchange market released for the end of June.  The local currency continues to struggle and depreciated by 8.2% as of June 29, the data said. This represents the…

ONEGO, an Investment Consulting Firm based in China, has begun negotiations with some key stakeholders to establish an ultra-modern industrial city in the Central Region. The city would be built on 10,000 to 25,000 acres of coastal lands with the capacity of accommodating more than 100 different manufacturing enterprises. It would have a minimum capacity…

The Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems GhIPSS has disclosed to Citi Business News that all electronic payment transactions will be migrated onto new servers it has secured, next month. The upgraded servers would be used for the next five years. According to GhIPSS, this should help address challenges associated with electronic transactions including mobile…

A study by the Institute of Industrial Research at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has revealed that the Renewable Energy subsector is unattractive to private investors. The Institute cited low returns on tariff, lack of access to long term financing by the private sector and the high cost of extending grid to…

Ray Sowah, Managing Director of GCB Bank, has revealed that the Bank plans to expand its operations into the West Africa sub-region, beginning with the English-speaking countries. A statement from the Bank to the Ghana News Agency noted that the Bank was also exploring with a foreign partner to form a joint venture to provide…

The Governing Committee of the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) has approved a funding allocation of US$61.8 million for the African Development Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) program. We-Fi is a partnership among 14 donor governments, eight multilateral development banks, and other public and private sector stakeholders, established in October 2017…

On Wednesday, May 15, 2019, U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Stephanie S. Sullivan hosted a reception in honor of the 2019 Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI)Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) cohort.  In attendance were Ghanaian alumni from YALI and other U.S. Government exchange programs from previous years. Since the inception of the Fellowship, the U.S. Government has committed…

The first quarter banking sector report published by the Bank of Ghana has shown that the private sector accounted for 96.9% of the total Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) within the industry. By this, the share of loans gone bad within the banking sector not attributable to the private sector represented 3.1%. According to the banking sector…