Mr Alan Kyeremanten, the Minister of Trade and Industry has announced that government would from next year organize annual presidential business summit to dialogue with the private sector on important national issues.

The summit will afford private sector the opportunity to interact with the President and key executives on their concerns and to agree on strategic performance indicators and obligations to be met by both government and the private sector.

Mr Kyeremanten, who made the announcement in Accra at the launch of government Business Regulatory Reform Strategy, said the summit would be preceded by inclusive regional business encounters to be organized by regional public private dialogue working committee, which would feed into the agenda for the summit.

The programme was on the theme: “The Road to Sustainable Reforms: Government’s Business Regulatory Strategy”.

The reform is a three-year initiative of government coordinated by the Ministry of Trade and Industry and implemented in collaboration with various stakeholders aimed at making the country the most transparent and efficient regulated business environment in Africa.

The Minister said the reform consisted of seven components which included targeted reform initiatives, inventory and secure e-registry of business regulations, centralized public consultation portal, and rolling review of business regulations.

The rest of the components were regulatory impact assessment, targeted regulatory relief and permanent public private dialogue.

Mr Kyeremanten said the first component focused on ease of doing business reform initiative, which was a coordinated national programme to improve the country’s performance in key indicators and annual ranking on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index.

He explained that the initiative was important because it focused on selected regulations relevant to the life cycle of domestic small and medium sized businesses, saying the indicators measured in the index included starting a business, dealing with construction permit, resolving insolvency among others.

The Minister said the second component: inventory and secure e-registry of business regulations sought to build a secure centralized electronic registry of all legal documents and related forms to provide businesses with an easily accessible, one-stop repository of up-to-date information on all business regulations.

He said the centralized public consultation portal of the strategy was an interactive platform for the public to engage government on business-related policy, legal and regulatory changes.

Mr Kyeremanten explained that the regulatory relief component of the strategy focused on government giving grant targeted relief for small and medium enterprises from regulatory requirements at early stages of development to stimulate higher levels of entrepreneurship and job creation.

He said government had established an inter-ministerial facilitation committee to ensure effective implementation of the strategy.

Mr Henry Godfrey Rupiny Kerali, the Country Director of World Bank Group, commended government for the initiative, saying it would help move the country’s ranking on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index.

He said the World Bank remained committed to supporting Ghana in the business regulatory reform agenda to improve the business environment.

Mr Philip Smith, Country Director, Department for International Development Ghana, lauded government agenda of building Ghana beyond aid and pledge their assistance to build a robust regulatory policy for businesses to thrive.