The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has registered 32 projects during the first quarter of this year.

The projects are estimated at 15.9 million dollars made up of 13.54 million dollars of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and 2.36 million dollars of investment to be made in the local currency. A report on the Centre's operations for the first quarter of the year, said there were 19 joint foreign-Ghanaian registered enterprises projected to cost 10.56 million dollars and 13 wholly owned foreign projects estimated to cost 5.33 million dollars FDI. Initial capital transfers made amounted to 2.75 million dollars.

The companies are expected to employ 873 Ghanaians and 68 non-Ghanaians. The report said the services sector registered 11 projects involving 9.51 million dollars. This was followed by the manufacturing sector with 10 projects at a cost of three million dollars in both foreign and local funding.

The Centre has since 1999 been implementing the Gateway Programme, whose objective is a well-targeted investment promotion, private sector surveys and strategies to target export-oriented ventures, which seek to add value through the processing of national resources for the local and sub-regional markets.

"Since then there have been significant increases in the rate of site visits to the country. In 1999 there were 16 major in-coming delegations of prospective investors in some sectors of the economy, namely textiles and garments, aqua-culture and agro-processing."

Last year, these visits increased remarkably with 23 business delegations from 10 countries with interests in tourism, real estate development, electronics and electrical production. Since September 1994 the Centre has registered 1,192 projects mainly in the service (325) and manufacturing (310) sectors.

These projects comprising 782 (65.6 per cent) joint foreign-Ghanaian and 410 (34.4 per cent) wholly foreign owned projects, were estimated to have an establishment cost of 1.62 billion dollars of which 1.33 billion dollars were foreign capital and 290.54 million dollars local funding in equity.

Leading sources of foreign investments were Great Britain with 124 projects and India with 98 projects. Others were China (96 projects), USA (83 projects), Germany (79 projects) and Lebanon (66 projects).

From the developing countries Nigeria had 34, South Africa, 20 and Malaysia, 12.

The regional distribution of projects continued to be skewed towards the Greater Accra Region with 942 (79.03 per cent) projects and Ashanti Region with 89 (7.47%) projects.

As at the end of March 2001, the Centre had visited 1,133 (about 95 per cent of the 1,192 registered companies' sites and found 874 (73.32 per cent) enterprises in operation and 94 (7.89 per cent) in various stages of preparations to start business.

Efforts are being made to contact about 165 (13.84 per cent) enterprises that have been abandoned and the remaining that could not be traced.