Ghana is making progress in business readiness but continues to grapple with efficiency challenges, the World Bank has warned.
At a high-level B-READY working session in Accra on Tuesday, February 3, 2026, Subika Farazi, Senior Economist in the World Bank’s Business Ready unit, outlined the country’s strengths while pointing to areas requiring urgent reform.
According to the B-READY 2025 assessment, Ghana’s business readiness scores range from 72% in financial services to 34% in market competition, reflecting strong regulatory frameworks but persistent gaps in how policies work in practice.
Comparing Ghana with regional peers, Farazi noted that regulation remains the country’s strongest pillar.
“When compared with the regional peers, we see that the regulatory pillar, for Ghana, shows the strongest performance. Even for public services pillars, Ghana’s scores lag only behind Togo, outperforming the rest of the economies,” she said.
However, she cautioned that efficiency remains a drag on competitiveness.
“In terms of the operational efficiency pillar, Ghana’s relative performance is not as strong as that of many peer economies, including Togo, Senegal, Cameroon, and Cape Verde, showing stronger scores in the efficiency pillar.”
At the topic level, Ghana performs well in financial services, labour and business entry, placing among the stronger performers in the region.
“Overall, the business readiness of Ghana ranges from 72% in financial services to 34% in market competition. Ghana performs well in financial services and labour topics, and in fact is in the top wind tunnel for labour,” Farazi explained.
International trade emerged as a key area where efficiency gains could deliver quick wins. Farazi cited clearance delays as a major bottleneck:
“For example, in Ghana, it takes on average 9 to 23 days for export and import clearance, which on average takes around 5 to 8 days in Cameroon.”
The working session brought together senior government officials, private-sector leaders and World Bank teams to examine constraints affecting food processing, light manufacturing and trade facilitation priority sectors under the government’s 24H⁺ programme.
The World Bank said the B-READY findings provide granular, data-driven insights to support Ghana’s reform agenda, as the country seeks to improve operational efficiency, strengthen private-sector growth and enhance its competitiveness on the regional and global stage.
