Investment Promotion Agencies and their Attraction of Foreign Direct Investment in Ghana

Foreign Direct Investment plays an important role in the development of countries. Empirical studies have shown that some emerging countries opened to FDI have a higher growth rate than those that have not opened to it, with positive consequence in social and economic development. Countries all over the world have set up Investment Promotion Agencies (IPA) to promote the various investment opportunities that exist in those countries. The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) was set up to promote and facilitate investments in different sectors of Ghana’s economy. The objective of this study is to investigate the promotional activities of the GIPC and also analyze the effect of these promotional activities on FDI inflow. The results of the study indicated that the Centre over the last couple of years embarked on numerous investment promotion missions to attract FDI. These missions have translated into large inflows of FDI especially in 2011 where there was a total investment of USD 6.8 billion. The results also indicated that the service sector attracted the largest number of registered projects, while the building and construction sector received the largest amount of capital inflow. The agriculture sector employed the largest number of Ghanaians while the building and construction sector employed the largest number of foreigners. The Greater Accra Region recorded the largest number of registered projects while the Upper West Region recorded the least number of registered projects. China tops in the number of registered projects while Britain tops in the amount of capital inflow.