Ghana’s economy, as research has indicated, is hugely informal, with over 80 per cent of the population engaged in that sector.
Though it is a vibrant sector, it would need to grow and expand in creating jobs for our teeming, youthful population.
Again, in the last several years, we had been complaining about challenges in finding addresses of companies and citizens, largely because of our undeveloped architecture.
Even in some of the residential areas, numbering of homes and names of neighbours are difficult to access, even when that information is needed to resolve a critical challenge like bringing in the Fire Service.
The problem is the same in the markets, even when we have fish and meat or vegetable and hardware sections. Names of actors in the markets also don’t jell with their national ID cards, making it risky for banking and insurance institutions offering social protection policies, for instance, to manage risks.
On construction sites or in our neighbourhoods, where other layers of informal economy operate, the story is the same – a culturally lack of a who is what system in which bad people get lost in the crowd and good, credible folk lack access to policies and programmes that would bring out the best in them for national benefit including paying taxes.
Job creation initiatives
In the last four years of the New Patriotic Party administration, under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, initiatives in skills training and agriculture as well as internships with state institutions, forestation and revenue generation, helped in modest ways for government to identify actors who needed support and grasp areas in which there were deficits in support.
Initiatives like Planting for Food and Jobs and Planting for Export also helped identify producers in the various regions, and also project how their activities would impact national food security.
And for those privileged to be attached to entrepreneurial agro training programmes in Israel or some other countries, the impact from those forms of formalisation will soon be evident in how our manufacturing sector expands in the next couple of years.
Additionally, mechanising members of market associations, who have been complaining bitterly about having been marginalised in accessing funds for their economic activities, would be the solution to access credit, for instance, in enhancing productivity and the obligation to pay taxes for national development.
Digitisation is a must
That is why we agree with Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia when he calls on business leaders and CEOs to embrace the ongoing digitization drive being championed by the government.
In a country where thousands of people register each day to open businesses, without it reflecting in our national coffers and development, we can no longer dither on speeding up processes for moving to the next level in our industrialisation drive.
And, particularly, when we are on our way to becoming a high middle class country like our contemporaries in Indonesia, Thailand or Malaysia, the sense of urgency required in setting up such structures is imperative.
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