Businesses in the country have once again cited the inadequate access to credit and its high cost as the two topmost challenges hindering their growth, the Business Barometer Index (BBI) of the second quarter of the year has indicated. The private sector businesses, mostly manufacturers and service providers, also cited high level of taxation and high utilities as the next most challenging factors. They limited their choice of high cost of raw materials which used to be their topmost challenge, down to the fifth place. The second quarter business barometer recorded a positive indicator of 30.3, which indicates a marginal increase in business expectation over 30.0 recorded in the first quarter, which means the CEOs interviewed, are more confident in the business environment in the second quarter than in the first. The BBI measures the level of confidence in the business environment and predicts a short-term business trend, calculated based on current business mood and expectations for the future, measured on a scale between positive 100 and negative 100. The President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), organisers of the (BBI), Nana Owusu-Afari, who presented the findings at a press conference in Accra, said the study had given ample evidence that financial intermediation in the country was still poor in spite of significant increase in the number of Commercial banks that had been operating in the country over the last 10 years. “Difficulty in accessing credit and high cost of credit implies that the industry is unable to harness new technologies for improved productivity through retooling. For this reason, companies operating in Ghana have become less competitive,” he said. Nana Owusu-Afari said business operators in the country did not share in the view of the Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011 which described the financial sector in Ghana as 'relatively well-developed', saying business concerns still found it difficult in getting loans from banks and those that got credit felt lending rate were too high. “There is, therefore, the need for the Bank of Ghana to strengthen its regulatory role to remove the inefficiencies in the financial system in the country to improve access to credit and bring lending rates to competitive levels,” the AGI president stressed. In spite of those challenges, business executives are very optimistic that the business environment would perform better in the third quarter of the year, as about 66 per cent of the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) interviewed indicated that they expected the performance of their businesses in the third quarter to surpass that of the second quarter. For their optimism, they assigned expected improved market; enhanced productivity of workforce; and increase in the purchasing power of consumers as the reasons. On the other hand, eight per cent of the respondents think their businesses would perform poorly in the third quarter because of high level of taxation; new government policy (including the 20 per cent environmental tax); and high utility prices. The remaining 25.7 per cent of the CEOs said the performance of their firms would remain unchanged in the period under review due to lack of market; high utility prices; and high cost of raw materials. Other challenges at the bottom of the ladder included the lack of market, delayed payments, and poor infrastructure. For the manufacturing sector, where most AGI members operate, their topmost three challenges facing them were high utility prices, access to credit and high level of taxation, while for the agricultural sector, the backbone of the country’s economy, their worries are access to credit, high cost of raw materials and cost of credit.