Successful reform of the land tenure system and market, one of the key obstacles to doing business in Ghana, must begin with a non-partisan dialogue between the government and traditional leaders over ways to facilitate land acquisition and its use for productive purposes, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Hannah Tetteh, has said. She observed that the land tenure system has been plagued for years by conflicts between and within land-owning groups, poor documentation of landholdings within both customary and formal sectors, multiple land sales, racketeering, slow adjudication of land disputes by the courts, and a weak system of administration. “It (the land tenure system) is the big elephant in the room. What I think we need to do is have a non-partisan dialogue with our traditional leaders,” she said this at a roundtable in Accra to discuss how to boost the climate for investment and trade in the country. Land reform, she said, has been on the table for years and pursued at different times -- including under schemes funded by Western donors -- but the reality for many businesses and investors is that land acquisition remains a serious impediment to getting their enterprises off the ground. One of the more recent efforts to reform the system and structure of land administration, called the Land Administration Project I (LAP I), was rated by the World Bank, the main sponsor, as “moderately satisfactory” when it concluded in 2011. From an economic-growth perspective, the crux of land reform is about making it easier to turn the country’s vast unproductive or underutilised land resources into producing assets -- which past reforms and policies have failed to address sufficiently. Economists reckon Ghana could add a couple more percentage points to its annual economic growth... if it fully employed its land resources. This would also provide a stimulus to job-creation in an economy kept below its productive potential by significant unemployment. Ms. Tetteh said land nationalisation, which countries such as Botswana have pursued to solve the problem, is not feasible in Ghana. “I don’t think nationalisation is the solution, because you have to think of how to compensate the owners. And that is where you have to ask yourself whether paying such compensation to landowners is the correct prioritisation of the government’s resources,” the minister said. Ms. Tetteh noted that any model for reform must include ways in which communities can benefit from the sale or use of land that is held on their behalf by their traditional leaders. “We have to get the traditional authorities to form trusts in which the lands are vested, as opposed to vesting them in chiefs or individuals. In this way, the money received into the trust can be used to develop the communities.” The roundtable, which was convened by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), also heard views on how to turn Ghana’s economy around, toward high growth that is sustainable and job-producing. “We have not done well with cocoa and most of our raw materials: so what we need to do now is transform the economy from agro-based to an industrial, manufacturing economy,” said Dr. Charles Mensa, Chairman of the IEA. He said the example from Asia’s developed and fast-developing nations should point Ghana towards pursuing export-led industrialisation in which local producers benefit from wider market access and economies of scale. Ms. Tetteh said the drawback to producers’ ability to expand into international markets is their low level of competitiveness. “The name of the game is competitiveness. No matter how high you raise tariffs, you’re going to have importers coming in from south-east Asia because they’re able to produce at a cheaper cost than you are.” Bolstering competitiveness requires strong infrastructure, skills development and trade policies that create access to large markets, she said, adding the push by the government to quickly utilise oil earnings for strategic economic investment is directed towards that goal.