Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Professional Studies, Accra, Professor Ernest Kofi Abotsi, says Ghana has not necessarily been the most attractive place in terms of its business regulatory environment.

According to him, the country’s business regulatory environment has been challenging for some time, even as the system is being reformed to improve services.

Speaking particularly about the Office of the Registrar of Companies, he noted that there was still so much to be desired.

“The former registrar general which used to register companies has been criticized over the years for being slow relative to other countries. And so the turnaround time in places like Rwanda and co, two days, couple of days, the turnaround time in Ghana until recently was quite long. These days we’re doing well, we’re still hovering around the two weeks mark, but we’re doing well and things continue to evolve,” he said.

He noted that the Registrar of Companies has embarked on a mission to improve services at the registry to reflect the needs of businesses.

“It is to her credit that the current head of the ORC has actually put in place a number of mechanisms and continue to put in place a number of reforms to ensure that the turnaround time for businesses both from the standpoint of incorporation and various filings of all kinds of returns and all kinds of filings and all kinds of searches and regulatory enquiries and all that, the place is being structured and reorganized to reflect the needs of businesses,” he said.

Prof. Abotsi stated that to match up to the competitiveness in the business environment, it behoves the Registrar of Companies to ensure that bottlenecks including corruption, inadequate or inappropriate data and information, cost and time are adequately addressed to make the business environment more attractive.

“And I think that the evolution that is happening is great, is fantastic. Perhaps it has to be a bit faster than it used to be but of course things are not that easy.

“If you are converting an institution that otherwise has been around for more than 50 years without much change and you’re suddenly converting and rearranging it things are not that easy,” he said.