Business News of Tuesday, 13 July 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-07-13
Rt Hon. Alban Bagbin is Speaker of Ghana’s 8th Parliament
Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has announced a review of the GIPC Act 2013, Act 865 that will exempt the capital requirement for Nigerian retailers to trade in Ghana.
According to a joint communique issued between Ghana and Nigeria, following the Extraordinary ECOWAS Summit, Nigerian retailers will now be exempted from paying a US$1 million capital requirement under the Act to facilitate trade.
Making the disclosure before Nigeria’s House of Representatives last week, Speaker Alban Bagbin said the development will end long standing retail impasse between Ghana and Nigeria.
“…of particular mention is the reconsideration of the US$1 million minimum requirement for trading enterprises under section 28(2) of the Act. This is to facilitate regularization of the businesses of affected Nigerian retail traders in the trade impasse.”
“Equally commendable is the special concession to be applied to a requirement for a payment of 0.5 stamp duty. Our Parliament is working to make sure this does not apply to our brothers and sisters from Nigeria,” Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin announced.
The announcement comes after the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), in December 2019, locked up over six hundred shops belonging to Nigerian retailers at Nkrumah Circle in Accra.
The move was replicated in Kumasi, Ashanti region as most of the shops belonging to Nigerian traders were also forced to shut down that year after Ghanaian traders alleged that Nigerian traders had taken over the retail business in the country.
The decision then caused a clash between Ghanaian traders and Nigerian traders leading to the arrest of some persons involved while others were badly injured.