As the government prepares grounds for the flagship 24-Hour Economy to take off, Presidential Adviser on the 24-Hour Economy Initiative, Goosie Tanoh, is calling for sweeping reforms in Ghana’s financial sector to enhance the financing of the program.
Goosie Tanoh argues that without fixing the systemic challenges in the financial sector, the government’s ambitious 24-Hour Economy program will face severe funding problems.
The presidential adviser on the initiative made this call at a high-level banking roundtable organized by the secretariat to “sell” the vision of the program to the banking community as part of efforts to seek their funding support.
Goosie Tanoh called on the banking community to be partners to the implementation by providing the necessary credit needed to these ambitious projects within the program.
Despite the need for their support, he insisted that there are some bottlenecks in the financial sector that need fixing to enhance the success of the program.
Among other challenges, he acknowledged that access to finance is the single greatest bottleneck for entrepreneurs and businesses, with Ghana’s banking industry ranking among the most difficult globally in terms of availability of credit, high costs of borrowing, restrictive term structures, and punishing collateral requirements.
“Any entrepreneur will tell you that availability, costs, term structure, and collateral conditions of Ghana’s banking industry rank among the most highest constraints to business development in Ghana. We must fix this,” he advocated.
But he was quick to note that the problem runs deeper than just the entrepreneurs’ inability to meet banks’ requirements. According to him, the banking sector itself suffers from structural weaknesses, including years of “disjointed rather than systemic fixes,” a legacy of bureaucratic regulatory systems, and incentive structures skewed by governments desperate to tap banks for budget financing.
These, he argued, have created a distorted financial landscape where banks often lend more to the government than to the real economy. “We must fix this also,” he called.
He further pointed to the constant crisis-management mode of state financial managers and regulators, particularly finance ministers and central bankers, who juggle limited resources to keep government machinery running while funding infrastructure, energy, and social programmes in an unforgiving international financial system.
To him, the surest way forward is a concerted and simultaneous effort by all players, including banks, regulators, government, and entrepreneurs, to create space for a truly productive economy.
“All these programmes and possibilities remain on the shelf without being oiled by finance,” he confessed urging the banking sector to align itself with the 24-Hour Economy vision as “true masters of the credit game.”
Ghana, he said, cannot expect outsiders to fix its economic challenges. “That unfortunately is a dream that will never be realised. We have to fix it. We have a unique historical opportunity to transform if we work together with open minds,” he said.
