Mahama: Sole proprietorship killing Ghanaian businesses

One-man businesses are a bane unto themselves, President John Mahama has observed.

“I’ve always said we must overcome our thinking of being the sole owner of our businesses, and that is one of the drawbacks of Ghanaian businesses”, Mahama said at the launch of the First Bank of Nigeria in Accra Tuesday night.

FBN recently acquired Ghana’s International Commercial Bank.

Speaking as the Guest of Honour at the launch, President Mahama said mergers and acquisitions must be encouraged in Ghana to grow local businesses.

“A [one] hundred percent owner of a $20 billion business is not as good as being the 20 percent owner of a $1 billion business. And so let’s stop this business about wanting to hold our businesses to ourselves and not letting the business grow beyond that, and bring people who have financial muscle to invest in the business and be a part owner of what is bigger than what we had when we were the 100 percent owner” Mahama advised.

“…I think that we must have mergers; we must have acquisitions; we must dilute our shares; and have a smaller share of a bigger cake than have a small cake of which we are the sole owner”, he counseled.

According to him, “that is the way to go and I believe we can learn from Nigeria’s experience”.

“We see Nigerian banks coming here because they did what they needed to do to clean the sector; put in the reforms; and make those banks transparent and big enough to be able to go multinational, we can do the same here in Ghana”.