The Enabling Environment for Sustainable Enterprises in Ghana

In 2019-2020, the ILO carried out an assessment of Ghana’s Enabling Environment for Sustainable Enterprises: This was a tripartite exercise involving the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Ghana Employers’ Association, and the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations.

The EESE process made an exhaustive identification and analysis of over 300 barriers in the business environment. This information provided the basis for tripartite consultations and discussion concerning the key hindering factors for enterprise investment and creation of formal jobs in Ghana.

The results of the EESE analysis and tripartite discussions allowed for the further specification of a number of actions to confront the barriers. Tripartite discussions also permitted to agree on a proposal of a “Tripartite Coordination Mechanism (TCM)” as a concrete instance to promote improvements on the business environment.

The proposal seeks to support the launch and institutionalization of the TCM, which will promote a strategic intervention of concerted, coordinated, and common understanding concerning priority and common actions. The central thrust of the programme is to strengthen Public-Private and Tripartite Dialogue mechanisms concerning the business environment to make them permanent, more results-oriented, and effective. This intervention thus seeks to implement the TCM as the central instance to organize the dialogue, discuss specific proposals to improve the business environment, and undertake concrete action to promote, approve and implement reforms. Based on this dialogue, the programme will also make other contributions to coordinate with other private-public consultation initiatives and business environment interventions. The Tripartite Partners will have joint and equal responsibility for achieving the objectives of the TCM.

The tripartite discussions during 2021provided further basis to seek the implementation of the programme in the near future.