The Dean of the Faculty of Accounting and Finance at the University of Professional Studies (UPSA), Professor Isaac Boadi, has emphasized that there is the need for the Government to change the laws allowing foreigners who own companies and industries to repatriate their earnings to their home countries.
Taking his turn to share his views on ABC News Economic Symposium under the theme ‘Arresting the Dollar: Political Rhetoric or Reality?’, Professor Boadi said that Ghana has been doing well since 2017 in terms of trade surplus, but the beneficial countries are out there and not Ghana.
“Since 2017, Ghana has been recording trade surpluses. This means that more dollars come into the economy. But the challenge is that, these entities are foreign owned and our laws permit them to repatriate more than 70% of their earnings to their home countries,” he said.
He further indicated that until that regime or law is changed, though the country will continue to record trade surpluses, Ghana will continue to lose out.
“As already indicated, Ghana doesn’t benefit much from the surpluses we make in trade. The state needs to change those laws to allow more of the earnings which are in dollars to be kept in the country. We should be deliberate about this and change the laws,” Professor Isaac Boadi stated.
He was of the opinion that the state can do more than allowing this status quo to remain in place.
“As long as we have more foreigners with huge capital to set up companies or businesses, and we continue to record trade surpluses, these foreigners and their countries will benefit more than Ghana because of the existing legislation,” he indicated.
The ABC News Economic Symposium held on Thursday, 13th June, 2024, is the first of a series of programs lined up for the year.
