President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has invited other Heads of State and the heads of businesses across the globe to focus on discharging the 450bn United States dollars African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) driven potential income that stands to be harnessed from continental trade by 2035.
President Akufo-Addo believes that, a percentage increment in Africa’s share of global trade from two percent to three percent could generate some seventy billion United States dollars of additional income per annum for the continent.
According to the President, one of the ways this can be achieved this feat is for all within the global community to support the call for a new investment approach that seeks to prioritize mutually reinforcing partnerships between the private sectors across advanced economies and the economies of Africa.
President Akufo-Addo, while speaking at this year’s edition of the Africa-Italy summit in Rome, Italy, said, ‘’in line with the urgency to take the necessary steps towards resiliency as a continent, it is important to avoid “tax-dodging”, which is the illegitimate commercial transactions by multinationals, which account for sixty percent of the US$88 billion of illicit financial flows annually from the continent, and other relationships which inhibit Africa’s development’’
The President, however noted positively, that with the right reforms and interventions, Africa, could unlock some US$550 billion of investments annually in infrastructure.
He said, “Before 2020, Africa was attracting increasing foreign direct investment (FDI), although overall FDI inflows remained much lower than in other world regions. Between 2000 and 2019, FDI flows to Africa increased fourfold, with a compound annual growth rate of eight-point-five percent (8.5%). Our biggest challenge is not a scarcity of financing, but a confluence of poor governance, speculative risk perception, and a defective environment for crowding in investors.”
President Akufo Addo was confident that with added emphasis placed on creating a peaceful landscape that innovatively crowds in resources from private sources of capital, international financial institutions, and sovereign wealth funds, governments on the continent will have to focus their efforts on delivering transformative investments like infrastructure to boost Africa’s developmental goals.
Source: Kobina Darlington/peacefmonline.com
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