Mahama meets French business community in Paris

President John Dramani Mahama on Wednesday, held a closed-door meeting with MEDEF, a conglomeration of 60 business companies, to map up collaborations that would enhance the better Ghana development agenda.

While some of the companies are already partnering Ghana in the areas of oil and gas, energy and industry, others have also expressed their interest in taking advantage of the stability in Ghana to invest.

Briefing journalists after the closed-door meeting, Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Trade and Industry said President Mahama discussed with some of the companies to partner Ghana to expand the Tema motorway to accommodate the growing vehicular movement on the road.

According to him, as Ghana is positioning herself adequately to maintain her status as the gateway to Africa, a lot of bilateral discussions also centered on energy, industry and trade that will subsequently open up job creation and other avenues that would make the country and her neighbours economically and politically comfortable.

Mr Iddrisu gave the assurance that the meetings will yield dividends by the next eight months and called on the Ghanaian business community to take advantage of the collaboration to grow their industries and seek technical support that would make them self-sufficient in future.

“As soon as we return to Ghana, most of the French companies will follow up to finalize the talks, and I can assure you that in the next eight months, Ghanaians will see the difference and significance of our visit,” the Minister added.

The President of the African Committee of MEDEF International, Patrick Lucas told journalists that they visited Ghana over a week ago and have decided to do a lot of business in the West African country on account of the congenial atmosphere for business.

He mentioned stability, good governance and democracy as some of the indicators that encouraged them to do business with the Ghanaian community saying, “we are also happy that the President of Ghana himself has decided to meet us on his visit to our country.”

The MEDEF President members have already started some businesses in Ghana and indicated that their meeting would leverage their determination to invest massively in the country in the coming years.

The Deputy Minister of information and Media Relations, Felix Owusu Quakyi, said a lot of the companies had also expressed interest in partnering Ghana and private companies in Agri-Business and urged the private sector to take advantage of the opportunity to build their capacities and expand their businesses.