FACILITATING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR Policy Context Ghana’s private sector is under-developed and dominated by the informal sector which is by far the largest employment sector of the Ghanaian economy. – accounting for about 80% of the employed work force, with the formal private sector accounting for only 7.8% of the employment of the economically active population. Given that close to 68% of employed population are self-employed with no employees and only 5.2% of the employed population are self-employed with one or more employees, the job creating potential and capacity of the Ghanaian economy is extremely low. Also given that new vacancies in the Government sector are declining on a yearly basis, and the fact that, the majority of the self-employed, do not have the capacity to employ others --- prospects for job opportunities for what is a relatively young population are very low. The need to develop the private sector as a whole and the formal sector in particular to serve as an engine for growth is imperative if Ghana is to make headway in addressing a number of its key developmental challenges. The development of the private sector as one of the strategies to improve the economy’s job creation capability is therefore a priority area of Government’s overall socio-economic development programme The Policy Statement The Government recognizing the critical role that the private sector can play as a key partner in the process of moving Ghana into an information and knowledge economy is committed to promoting and facilitating the role of the private sector in the development and participation in the Ghana information society and economy. As part of this commitment, the Government will create the necessary enabling environment and put in place the necessary policy programmes, and incentive packages to facilitate the role of the private sector in the nation’s development. The Government is further committed to the creation of a stable economic and investment climate that will assist both domestic and foreign private sector organizations in the development of: the physical telecommunication and communications infrastructure and other ICT infrastructure; the provision of information resources and systems to support the activities of various sectors of the economy; the development of human resources in ICT and other skill areas required by the information economy; as well as in the mobilization of financial resources and other technological resources to aid the process of developing and exploiting the opportunities of the information economy. These policy commitments shall in addition contribute to addressing some of the other identified developmental challenges facing Ghana, including: the challenges of the disproportionate informal private sector; the challenges of the low job creation capacity of the economy as well as the challenges of the narrow export base dominated by traditional exports, the under-developed physical infrastructure and the poor and limited communications and telecommunications infrastructure 44