Ghana announces partnership with Open Ownership

Professor Gyan Baffour, Planning Minister for Ghana, announced today that the country will be working with Open Ownership to build a public, open data register of beneficial ownership information.

As part of the pilot programme that Ghana is joining, we will work with them to produce high quality beneficial ownership data that can ultimately be integrated with the Open Ownership Register and linked with data from around the world.

Professor Baffour was speaking at a session of the Concordia Summit in New York, co-hosted by The B Team and Transparency International, that focused on the efforts of public and private sector leaders to fight corruption and restore integrity in business and government.

Speaking on behalf of Ghana’s President, Professor Baffour said:

“Our new Companies Bill will require every company in Ghana to provide information on who owns or who controls them. Companies who fail to provide this information will face sanctions. Importantly, the bill will require the establishment of a central register of beneficial ownership available to the public. This will make doing business in Ghana more transparent and reliable, and support local and foreign investment. Investment and companies want to know who they are doing business with, and to be able to easily assess respective partners and investors….

“We are also very pleased to be working with the Open Ownership consortium, which includes our hosts B Team and Transparency International…to make sure that Ghana’s register is in accordance with international best practice. That is, providing accessible, open data that can be connected with data from other countries to identify ownership across borders. We are excited to be one of the first pilot countries, along with Ukraine.”

Ukraine was the first country to commit to Open Ownership’s pilot program. Ukrainian Minister of Justice Pavlo Petrenko, also speaking at the event, reinforced his country’s commitment to working with OpenOwnership to build an open, effective beneficial ownership register.

This session is available to watch on-demand along with the rest of the Concordia Summit.