Ghana recorded one of its biggest drops in the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report with the data showing the country stepping down by 12 places.

According to the Report, the country dropped from 108 in 2017 to 120 in 2018.

What is World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report?  

The Doing Business Report provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.

The Doing Business project, launched in 2002, looks at domestic small and medium-size companies and measures the regulations applying to them through their life cycle.

It assessed the countries based on 11 indicators such as starting a business, access to a credit facility, registering a property, access to electricity, paying taxes, protecting minority investors, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. 

Period for assessment

The doing business report assessed data, regulations and reforms taken by regulators in 190 countries from June 2016 to June 2017. 

The World Bank together with its partners around the world looks at how regulators have improved the environment or untaken reforms when it comes to the all the 11 indicators reviewed in the “rankings”.

How Ghana fared

The data showed that Ghana dropped in most of the indicators that the World Bank reviewed in the assessment. 

 Pillar                                2017 Rank/190 countries               2018        

Starting a business                       110                                          110

Dealing with contracts                   117                                         131

Getting Electricity                          120                                         136

Registration of Property                  77                                         119

Payment of Taxes                          112                                         116

Trading Across Borders                154                                         158

Getting Credit                                 44                                          55

Protecting minority investments     87                                          96

Enforcement of Contracts            114                                         116

Resolving of Insolvency               155                                        158

Despite these challenging results, Ghana was praised for increasing the transparency of dealing with construction permits by publishing regulations related to construction online.

Ghana and Africa

The region is well represented in this year’s global top 10 improvers, based on reforms undertaken, with Malawi; Nigeria; and Zambia.

Malawi, which implemented four reforms, made significant improvements in the area of Getting Credit by adopting a new law that sets clear rules related to bankruptcy procedures and by establishing a new credit bureau.

Kenya implemented the most reforms in the region in the past year, with six.

Among other improvements, Kenya made starting a business easier by reducing the number of procedures required to register a business and reduced the time for import documentary compliance by utilizing a single window system.

Ghana was ranked 12 out of 47 reviewed in Africa coming after countries like Mauritania which topped the Africa rankings (1) Rwanda (2) Kenya (3) Botswana(4) Zambia(6)

Ghana and West Africa

Despite Ghana’s significant drop in doing business report, it still did better than other giants in the West Africa Region.

It took the top spot as the best place for doing business in sub-region, beating Ivory Coast (18) Senegal (19) and the biggest economy in Nigeria (22) and Gambia (23).

Response 

Sources close to government are hopeful Ghana would come up strongly in the 2019 rankings. This is based on reforms that they have undertaken.

Since the first quarter of this year, government has introduced the paperless system at the ports and reforms implemented so far at the Registrar General Department to aid business registrations, would go a long way to improve the business environment.

Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and the rankings

Chief Executive of the Ghana Promotion Centre, Yoofi Grant, noted that there was the need to fast-track the implementation of reforms being implemented by government to achieve the desired results soon.

Speaking in an interview from Dubai, he noted that despite this challenge, Ghana still remains that preferred place for doing business in the region, because of its stable political environment.