GIPC Calls For Strong Partnership Among Pension Companies

The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has called for closer collaboration with pension and assets fund management companies in order for them to identify investment opportunities in the country. It said stronger partnership between the two parties would also provide opportunities for fund managers to diversify their portfolios. The Director in charge of Research and Investment at the GIPC, Mr Kofi Sakyi Armah, said this at the opening of the maiden Ghana Pensions and Sovereign Funds Investment Forum in Accra last Friday. Organised by Africonomie and partners, the two-day forum was on the theme, �Repositioning Indigenous Investment Funds for Private Capital Investment�. He told the fund managers that the GIPC was ready to discuss and advise them on areas that were available and then they could decide on which areas they were interested in to invest. According to him, Ghana had a stable political environment with rapidly developing infrastructure and a number of investment opportunities in all aspects of the economy. Mr Kissieh Anthonio, the Managing Director (MD) of Asset Management at Ecobank, said in the last few years, many investors had woken up to the fact that there were opportunities to make superior returns in Africa than in other parts of the world. He said investors outside the region kept saying that �Africa is one of the world�s best kept secrets�. Due to this, there has been increasing investor inflow in the last decade or so with investors realising that if they want to commit to Africa, they need to do it soon. �A lot of the excitement about Africa has focused on sub-Saharan African (SSA) frontier markets with the most interest being on Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.� The MD asserted that despite Africa being on the radar of many investors, there were a lot who were still not too sure about the region because of perceived downside risks but noted that in general terms, the actual risk of investing in Africa was far less than the perceived risks. He, therefore, called for the investment of resources that would ensure that employees had the knowledge, skills and competencies they needed to work in a rapidly changing industry where competitiveness and innovation went with performance. �Also, in an industry where intellect and togetherness of a team is prized, it is important that investment in human capital include having the right compensation in place to attract the best and brightest and more importantly to retain them,� he said.