BUSAC Challenges Northern Media

Mr. Dennis Puorideme, the Tamale Office Chief of the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund, has challenged media men/women operating in the SADA operational areas of the three northern regions and parts of the Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions to advocate for a conducive or enabling environment so the private sector can thrive in the north. According to him, the media as strategic partners in the BUSAC Project should be able to advocate to effect changes in the legal and regulatory environment for efficient and effective business operations. �Business advocacy facilitates the development and growth of a competitive and vibrant private sector by improving the environment in which the businesses operate. �Advocacy is recognised as a key to removing constraints to doing business and increasing revenues in Ghana and elsewhere,� he told media men in Tamale at the first-ever media interaction with the BUSAC Tamale Office. He explained that the unprecedented developmental gap between the south and north is as a result of the lesser attention given to private sector in the north, and advised the media to report more on issues such as provision and access to infrastructure, enforcement of standards, unfair competition, and constraining laws and policies such as the burdensome tax laws and administrative bottlenecks businesses face in the north. He said the lesser-attention paid by the northern media in the BUSAC 1 and the location of the BUSAC secretariat in Accra resulted in an unequal geographic distribution of the funds with the northern, upper east and upper west trailing with just four, three and six percents respectively. �A new office has been opened in Tamale to serve the Northern, Upper East, Upper West Regions as well as northern parts of the Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions, with the aim of improving access of funds to Business Associations and Farmer-Based Organisations in the operational areas of SADA. �I urge you all to take advantage of our presence here to do more for the northern private sector,� he added.