The Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI) has urged Ghanaian businesses country-wide to consider pooling their resources together towards building stronger businesses and a private sector in general rather than remaining “as husband and wife businesses in this globally competitive business arena.” The chamber is of the view that the rising competition in the business environment, coupled with the giant nature of the country's business peers in the globe is gravely disadvantageous to indigenous firms due to their meagre resources resulting from their unwillingness to merge. While acknowledging that ‘small is beautiful’ with regard to business, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GNCCI, Mr Emmanuel Doni-Kwame, said the chamber “strongly feels that more consolidation (of businesses) is necessary, particularly in the private sector, if our companies are to be more successful abroad.” Mr Doni-Kwame threw the challenge to the country’s business sector when he addressed the 250th anniversary launch of the chamber in Accra. On the way forward for the ONCCI after its 250 years of existence, Mr Doni-Kwame said the chamber would be redirecting its attention on building capacity for its members instead of focusing on business advocacies as it had done over the years. While commending corporate Ghana for their invaluable support to the country’s development, Madam Hannah Tetteh, the Minister of Trade and Industry and the guest speaker at the launch, said businesses in Ghana “needed to be more business-minded, especially, in their dealings with the government.” According to her although most businesses were complaining of lack of support from the government to them, “most business institutions were refusing to see the government as partners especially when it comes to financial support.” She thus called on then to endeavour to pay back monies collected from the government to enable it to continue replicating the gesture to other needy businesses. “It is the view of this government to invest in infrastructure to facilitate the smooth take off of businesses, empower institutions and create the enabling environment for all businesses to thrive,” the minister added. The anniversary launch, which coincided with the rebranding of the chamber’s logo and its tag line, also saw the name of the chamber change from the GNCCI to the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI).