GEA to improve collaboration with stakeholders for development
The Ghana Employers Association (GEA) has pledged to strengthen its advocacy role in collaboration with other stakeholders to improve on the business environment for enterprise growth and development this year.
It said the key strands of engagement and dialogue with government and other relevant agencies would be on high cost of capital, skills development, national productivity, counterfeit goods and illicit trade and labour market.
The pledge was contained in a statement on “GEA Outlook 2011 and Beyond, “signed by Mr Alex Frimpong, Chief Executive Officer in Accra on Wednesday and copied to the Ghana News Agency.
It said the greatest challenge militating against enterprise growth and development was the high cost of capital, adding “Business growth and expansion, requires adequate capital that needs to be accessible and affordable”.
The GEA urged training institutions to step up learning programmes to ensure that students acquired the requisite employable skills relevant for the job market, because this had been the main barrier to the growth of many businesses in and outside the country.
“GEA will continuously play a critical role in ensuring that training institutions train to meet the needs of employers through collaboration between industry and training institutions,” it added.
On national productivity, the GEA said it would provide a policy position, which would enable government to make output the cornerstone of national development.
“We will dialogue with government to strengthen the institutional framework and capacity of the Management Development and Productivity Institute to carry out productivity indices across all sectors of the economy to help match remuneration with productivity.”
The statement said GEA would partner government and organised labour to develop productivity indicators for the various sectors to help improve sector productivity and national competitiveness.
On counterfeit goods and illicit business, it said GEA was collaborating with other stakeholders to step up an advocacy on creating an operating environment and regulatory regime that would make the country unattractive for counterfeit products and illicit trade.
“GEA will deepen its partnership with government and organised labour in developing a labour market information system that will help in employment analysis, forecasting and other research purposes,” it said.
Source: GNA