In a bid to attract foreign investment, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, 1994, provided for the establishment of the Investment Promotion Centre to be responsible for the administration of investment activities in Ghana. This has been followed by the Free Zone Act, 1995. This establishes a Free Trade Board consisting ofthe Minister for Trade and Industry (as the chairperson) and eight other persons, four of whom must come from the private sector and two of whom must be women. The function of the Board is to oversee the establishment and operation of free zones. The Act provides for the establishment and development of free zones and free ports and the establishment of enterprises therein by corporations registered under the Companies Act, 1963, or a partnership registered under the Private Partnership Act, 1962. A free zone enterprise has the right to produce any type of goods and services for export except those that are environmentally hazardous.
The space in the zone is limited; however, originally four (4) bonded zones were recently expanded. Now the zone covers 120 square kilometres and is currently composed of seven existing bonded zones, these are: Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone and Waigaoqiao Free Trade Logistics Park, Yangshan Free Trade Port Area; the first free trade zone in China, Pudong Airport Comprehensive Free Trade Zone; a deep-water port, key component of Shanghai Port, Lujiazui Finance and Trade Development Zone located west to Shanghai Pudong international Airport, Jinqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone a financial services hub and Zhangjiang High-tech Industrial Development Zone; an advanced manufacturing and manufacturer services area, high-tech manufacturing and medical services specialization area [36].
Ghana Free Zones Board Act Pdf Practice
Since the inception of the free zones program, a number of companies have been licensed under the scheme in order to benefit from the incentives that render them competitive and also give them the opportunity to reach a large international market. The Ghana Free Zones Board has progressively registered new companies each year. Total number of registered free zone companies as at 2014 was 352; the yearly distribution from 1996/97 to 2014 is shown in the graph (Figure 7).
During the year under review US$167.47 M was invested in various sectors of the free zone program. The cumulative amount of capital invested in free zones since the inception of the program in 1996/97 to the end of 2014 stands at US$2684.90 M. The breakdown of investments over the years is shown in Figure 11. Figure 12 shows the contribution of Ghana EPZ to National Gross Export for the period 2004 to 2014.
The Ghana Free Zone Board (GFZB) was established by the FreeZone Act, 1995 (Act 504) as amended by the Free Zone (Amendment)Act, 2002 (Act 618) to enable the establishment of free zones inGhana for the promotion of economic development; to provide for theregulation of activities in free zones and other relatedpurposes.
Section 7 of Act 504, as amended, provides for the establishmentof free zones in Ghana. It states that subject to the Constitutionof the Republic of Ghana and any other enactment in force relatingto the acquisition of property; the President may on therecommendation of the Board of free zones by notice in theCommercial and Industrial Bulletin in the Gazette declare asfollows:
The application of a license to operate any of the above shallbe submitted to the free zone board. The board will meet andconsider the application. Response to the application will be madewithin 28 days from the date of receipt of the application. Oncesuccessful, the board will grant and issue the license to theenterprise.
Yes. A free zones company in Ghana can be 100% foreign owned, 100% Ghanaian owned or investors from different countries coming together to form a company or a joint venture between a Ghanaian and a foreigner.
At the community level, other measures include improving health services in rural areas where the practice is more rampant, development of emergency care, referrals to a sex therapist and management of labour by well-trained medical and nursing personnel. Development of guidelines on management and creating help lines is also helpful, especially when accessing these lines is toll-free.
A nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) is a specified region in which countries commit themselves not to manufacture, acquire, test, or possess nuclear weapons. Five such zones exist today, with four of them spanning the entire Southern Hemisphere. The regions currently covered under NWFZ agreements include: Latin America (the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco), the South Pacific (the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga), Southeast Asia (the 1995 Treaty of Bangkok) Africa (the 1996 Treaty of Pelindaba) and Central Asia (the 2006 Treaty of Semipalatinsk).
Initial efforts to create an area free of nuclear weapons began in the late 1950s with several proposals to establish such a zone in Central and Eastern Europe. Poland offered the first proposal-named the Rapacki Plan after the Polish foreign minister-in 1958. The Rapacki Plan sought to initially keep nuclear weapons from being deployed in Poland, Czechoslovakia, West Germany, and East Germany, while reserving the right for other European countries to follow suit. The Soviet Union, Sweden, Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria also floated similar proposals. All these early efforts, however, floundered amidst the U.S.-Soviet superpower conflict, although the Rapacki Plan would serve as a model to the nuclear-weapon-free zones that were eventually set up in other regions of the globe.
Article VII of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which entered into force in 1970, affirms the right of countries to establish specified zones free of nuclear weapons. The UN General Assembly reaffirmed that right in 1975 and outlined the criteria for such zones. Within these nuclear-weapon-free zones, countries may use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Each treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone includes a protocol for the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the NPT-China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States-to sign and ratify. These protocols, which are legally binding, call upon the nuclear-weapon states to respect the status of the zones and not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against treaty states-parties. Such declarations of non-use of nuclear weapons are referred to as negative security assurances. For more information, see Nuclear Declaratory Policy and Negative Security Assurances.
However, the five nuclear-armed countries have at times signed and ratified a NWFZ protocol and declared conditions reserving the right to use nuclear weapons in certain scenarios against parties to a nuclear-weapon-free zone. For instance, the United States signed the protocol for the African nuclear-weapon-free zone in April 1996 with a declaration that it would reserve the right to respond with all options, implying possible use of nuclear weapons, to a chemical or biological weapons attack by a member of the zone. None of the nuclear-weapon states have signed the relevant protocol for the treaty creating a zone in Southeast Asia because of concerns that it conflicts with the right of their ships and aircraft to have freedom of movement in international waters and airspace and problems with the definitions of territory, since includes exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. The other three zones do not explicitly rule out the transit of nuclear weapons by nuclear-weapon states through the zones, and the general practice of nuclear-weapon states is not to declare whether nuclear weapons are aboard their vessels.
In addition to nuclear-weapon-free zones, there are treaties and declarations, which are not covered by this fact sheet, banning the deployment of nuclear weapons in Antarctica, Mongolia, on the seabed, and in outer space. 2ff7e9595c
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