Doing Business in Ghana: Tax, Law & Investment Guide

Ghana pairs a common-law legal system and a genuinely open foreign-investment regime with one notable gap: it currently has no general competition law. For investors weighing West Africa, that combination — straightforward company law, tiered capital-based entry rules, and a regulatory landscape still catching up on merger control — shapes much of what follows. This overview lays out the country's economic position, its legal and institutional structure, and the practical steps and risks involved in setting up a business there.

Ghana's economy is larger and more developed than several of its regional peers. Nominal GDP stands at USD 88.33 billion, with GDP per capita at USD 2,519.14 and inflation running high, at 17.17%. Government revenue equals 16.02% of GDP, while gross government debt sits at 66.44% of GDP. On risk metrics, Ghana scores 121 out of 211 on the S&P Global Market Intelligence Overall Country Risk index and ranks 80 out of 180 on the Corruption Perceptions Index — a mid-range position relative to global peers.

The main industries are mining, lumbering, light manufacturing, aluminium smelting, food processing, cement, small commercial ship building, and petroleum. Its leading export partners are Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, India, South Africa, and China, with gold, crude petroleum, cocoa beans, manganese ore, and cocoa paste as the principal export commodities. Its main import partners are China, the Netherlands, India, the United States, and Russia, importing chiefly refined petroleum, cars, plastics, plastic products, and footwear.

Government and legal system

Ghana is a presidential republic in which the president serves as both head of state and head of government. The president is directly elected by absolute majority vote — in two rounds if needed — for a four-year term, renewable once, and nominates a cabinet that Parliament must approve. Parliament is unicameral. The Supreme Court sits at the top of the judiciary, above the Court of Appeal, High Court, Circuit Court, and District Court; regional tribunals also exist in principle but are not currently operational in practice. The next presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for December 2028.

Ghana's legal system is based on English common law, statutes enacted by Parliament, subsidiary legislation, judicial precedent, and customary law. Commercial disputes are handled by the Commercial Division of the High Court in the first instance. Where parties have an arbitration agreement, that mechanism governs instead; if the arbitration is seated in Ghana, Ghanaian procedural rules apply, though the parties may separately choose the substantive law and the arbitral institution. An arbitral award is binding and can be registered with, and enforced by, the High Court as if it were a High Court judgment, subject to certain conditions that depend on whether the arbitration was foreign or domestic. Several sector-specific statutes — including the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, 2013, the Free Zones Act, 1995, the Labour Act, 2003, the Income Tax Act, 2015, and the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 — also set out their own dispute-settlement and arbitration provisions.

Ghana belongs to a range of regional and multilateral bodies, including the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, the African Development Bank Group, the African Union, the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, the Commonwealth, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Group of 24, the Group of 77, the IMF, the International Organisation of the French-speaking World (as an associate member), the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, the United Nations, the World Bank Group, and the World Customs Organization. It also receives preferential trade treatment under a set of agreements listed on the WTO's preferential trade agreement database.

Bilateral investment treaties are in force with Burkina Faso, China, Denmark, Germany, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Serbia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Treaties have also been signed — but are not yet in force — with Barbados, Benin, Botswana, Bulgaria, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Egypt, France, Guinea, Italy, Mauritania, Mauritius, Qatar, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Türkiye, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

On the investment side, Ghana participates in the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the Samoa Agreement (successor to the Cotonou Agreement), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, and the World Trade Organization. For dispute resolution, it is party to the New York Convention and the ICSID Convention.

Land

Land rights in Ghana are governed by the Land Act, 2020 and the 1992 Constitution, with the Lands Commission playing a central administrative role. The Constitution recognises three categories of land ownership: public and vested lands (state-owned, or land where the state has taken over the legal incidents of ownership from customary landowners — though it is unlawful to vest stool, skin, family, or clan lands in the state this way); stool or skin lands (community lands held by traditional leaders in trust for the community); and private and family or clan lands (owned directly by individuals, families, and clans). Families, clans, and private individuals may hold allodial, freehold, leasehold, and other lesser interests, but these must be registered with the Lands Commission to be valid. Foreign investors, however, can only hold land on a leasehold basis, for a maximum of 50 years at any one time.

Ghana currently has no generally applicable competition law or merger-control regime. A draft Competition and Fair Trade Practices Bill has lapsed and would need to be reintroduced to Parliament, with no indication of when — or whether — it will be passed. In the interim, various sectoral regulators are responsible for promoting fair competition, and in certain sectors, such as telecommunications, for merger control as well; each sectoral regulator sets its own definition of a merger, its own thresholds, filing fees, and timelines for notification, review, and approval. Ghana is a member of ECOWAS, which has an operational regional merger-control regime, so merger activity involving Ghana should be considered against ECOWAS's framework even in the absence of a domestic one.

Similarly, there is no general competition law governing prohibited practices such as cartel conduct, resale price maintenance, or abuse of dominance. The Protection against Unfair Competition Act, 2000 prohibits actions that impede fair competition or lead to uncompetitive pricing, poor-quality goods or services, or conduct contrary to honest business practices, but sectoral legislation contains no specific prohibitions on cartels or abuse of dominance — sectoral regulators are instead generally empowered to investigate and prohibit anticompetitive conduct as part of their broader mandate. ECOWAS has adopted its own competition laws covering certain agreements, concerted practices, and abuses of dominance, which should also be factored into any Ghana-related commercial conduct.

Foreign investment is governed by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, 2013 (the GIPC Act), which sets minimum investment thresholds depending on the structure: a joint venture with a Ghanaian partner requires a minimum foreign investment of USD 200,000 in cash or capital goods (or both), with the Ghanaian shareholder holding at least 10% equity; a wholly foreign-owned enterprise requires a minimum investment of USD 500,000; and a trading enterprise requires a minimum investment of USD 1 million in cash, goods, or services, plus the employment of at least 20 skilled Ghanaians. Any company with foreign participation must register with the GIPC after first registering with the Office of the Registrar of Companies, and this GIPC registration is renewable every two years.

Available entity types include a registered branch of a foreign company (external company), a company limited by guarantee, a private company limited by shares, a public company limited by shares (joint-stock company), and an unlimited company.

For the private company limited by shares — the most commonly used vehicle — the requirements are:

Beyond incorporation, companies must also secure: a taxpayer identification number (TIN) from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) — required not only for the company itself but also for its directors, shareholders, company secretary, and auditor, obtained before registering with the Registrar of Companies, with a single TIN covering all tax types; registration with the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) as soon as the first employee is hired (expatriates employed for 36 months or less who can show membership of a scheme elsewhere are exempt); an annually renewable business operating permit from the local District Assembly; registration with the Data Protection Commission — including appointing a data protection supervisor trained by a licensed Ghanaian training institution — if the business collects or processes personal data as a data controller (this also applies to data controllers based outside Ghana who process data originating from, or using equipment or processors located in, Ghana); and a fire certificate from the Ghana National Fire Service following a premises inspection (not required if the premises already holds a valid one). Industry-specific licences may also apply.

Ghana's incentives include accelerated depreciation allowances for capital expenditure on mineral and petroleum exploration and production assets; a concessionary income tax rate for manufacturing companies and companies earning income from agriculture and agro-processing; a reduced income tax rate for the first five years of operation for companies building, selling, or letting low-cost affordable residential property in partnership with the Ministry of Works and Housing; a 10-year tax holiday for free-zone developers and enterprises; incentives to encourage venture capital financing, waste processing companies, and banks lending to farming operations; a five-year tax holiday for young entrepreneurs in manufacturing, ICT, agro-processing, energy production, waste processing, tourism and creative arts, or horticulture and medicinal plants; and an additional tax deduction for companies in respect of salaries and wages paid to fresh graduates.

Exchange control

Ghana applies relatively flexible exchange control rules under the Foreign Exchange Act, 2006. Payments between a resident and a non-resident must go through a local commercial bank, supported by underlying transfer documents that the bank reports to the Bank of Ghana. Non-resident companies are, in principle, free to transfer their net after-tax profits abroad, unless their activities are financed with locally raised capital, and expatriate employees can transfer their salaries home once all relevant Ghanaian taxes are paid. Evidence of capital inflow and its conversion must be submitted via the Bank of Ghana to the GIPC as a prerequisite for GIPC registration and profit repatriation, and any "technology transfer agreement" between a Ghanaian recipient company and a foreign service provider must be registered with the GIPC before payments under that agreement can be made.

Tax

Ghana uses a residence-based tax system: residents are taxed on worldwide income, while non-residents are taxed only on Ghanaian-sourced income. A company is resident in Ghana if it is incorporated under Ghanaian law or has its management and control exercised in Ghana at any point during the tax year.

The standard corporate income tax rate is 25%. Mining and petroleum companies pay a higher rate of 35%, while Free Zone Enterprises pay a reduced 15% after their initial 10-year concessionary period. Reduced rates also apply to companies engaged in lottery operations, non-traditional exports, manufacturing, farming, agro-processing, hotels, waste processing, free zones, rural banking, residential construction, and venture capital financing. A company that has declared losses for the past five years of assessment must instead pay a minimum tax of 5% of turnover, though companies within their first five years of operation, or engaged in farming, are excluded from this rule.

Capital gains are included in ordinary taxable income and taxed at the standard corporate rate.

Withholding tax rates, which may be reduced under an applicable double tax agreement, are as follows:

Double tax agreements are in force with Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Mauritius, Morocco, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Qatar, and the United Kingdom.

Losses may generally be carried forward for five years. Under Ghana's transfer pricing rules, transactions between parties in a "controlled relationship" — where one party controls, or holds 25% or more of the voting power or income/capital rights in, the other, whether directly, indirectly, alone, or with others — must be conducted at arm's length. Thin capitalisation rules cap the accepted debt-to-equity ratio at 3:1 where 50% or more of a resident company's underlying ownership or control (other than a financial institution) is held by a non-resident.

Resident individuals are taxed on a progressive scale:

Non-resident employees are taxed at a flat 25% rate. Both employers and employees must contribute to two of the three tiers of the mandatory pension scheme administered by SSNIT — the employer contributes 13% of each employee's monthly salary, and the employee contributes 5.5%. There is no payroll tax in Ghana.

Stamp duty is levied under the Stamp Duty Act, 2005, on a wide range of instruments and documents, at rates between 0.25% and 1%, or between GHS 0.05 and GHS 25, depending on the transaction and instrument type; transfers of shares and immovable property fall within the 0.25%–1% band, depending on the value of the asset.

The standard VAT rate is 15%, though a taxable person must generally also pay a combined 6% in additional levies on top: a 2.5% Ghana Education Trust Fund Levy, a 2.5% National Health Insurance Levy, and a 1% COVID-19 health recovery levy. As of the source document's date, Ghana's 2025 mid-year budget had proposed abolishing the COVID-19 levy and removing the cascading effect of the other two levies, which would bring the combined VAT-and-levies rate down to an expected 20% — though this had not yet taken effect. Separately, a special 3% flat VAT rate applies to registrable retailers with taxable supplies of between GHS 200,000 and GHS 500,000 in any 12-month period (with no input VAT deduction allowed, though the COVID-19 health recovery levy still applies under this scheme), and a special 5% rate applies to the rental of immovable property outside of dwelling or commercial-establishment accommodation (also with no input deduction). The same 2025 budget proposed repealing these flat rates in favour of a single unified VAT rate.

VAT registration is mandatory for any person with annual taxable turnover of GHS 200,000 or more, or who exceeds GHS 50,000 in taxable supplies over any three-month period with reasonable grounds to expect the total will exceed GHS 200,000 within the following nine months. The 2025 budget also proposed raising this threshold to exempt small and micro businesses. Businesses below the threshold may register voluntarily. Under Ghana's VAT withholding scheme, an appointed withholding agent retains 7 percentage points of the 15% VAT payable to a trader and remits it directly to the GRA, with the remainder paid to the trader. Resident companies must self-account for output VAT on imported services from non-residents via a reverse-charge mechanism (except where the service is used to make taxable supplies), and this VAT cannot be claimed as an input; a non-resident providing digital services or e-commerce directly (rather than through a registered VAT agent) must register for and pay VAT regardless of turnover.

Employment and labour

Expatriates working in Ghana need a work permit, a residence permit, and a visa. A company registered with the GIPC receives an automatic immigrant quota based on its foreign capital contribution: one expatriate for USD 50,000–250,000 invested, two for USD 250,001–500,000, three for USD 500,001–700,000, and four above USD 700,000. Additional permits can be sought through the Ghana Immigration Service, supported by the employer's letter of employment and, where relevant, recommendations from industry-specific regulators.

Secondment to Ghana is legally permitted without requiring employment by a local entity, provided the Ghanaian entity can show proof of its relationship with the secondee — though certain roles, such as some in the upstream petroleum industry, are reserved for locals only, and local employment may still be preferred or required for tax or immigration reasons. An unlimited number of fixed-term contracts may be concluded, even for permanent tasks, though a temporary worker employed by the same employer for more than six continuous months is automatically treated as a permanent worker requiring a formal employment contract. Private employment agencies are commonly used and must be registered with and licensed by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, and employers must otherwise comply with the Labour Act's special provisions on temporary and casual workers. Remuneration must generally be paid in local currency, unless one party to the payment is non-resident or the Bank of Ghana has authorised payment in a foreign currency. Restraint-of-trade clauses are not statutorily prohibited, and the law is silent on their inclusion in employment contracts, but case law treats them as generally unenforceable unless reasonable in scope, duration, geographic coverage, and necessary to protect the employer's legitimate interests and the public interest.

Ghana is a first-to-file jurisdiction, meaning the first applicant to file secures the rights to a mark regardless of any prior unregistered use or reputation built by someone else. Classification follows the Nice Classification, but unlike some neighbouring jurisdictions, Ghana requires a separate application for each class of goods or services rather than allowing multi-class filing. Provision is made for goods and service marks, collective marks, and certification marks.

Filing requires a simply-signed Power of Attorney placed on the applicant's letterhead, a specification of the goods and/or services to be used with the mark, the name and address of the mark's owner, a reproduction of the mark, and — where applicable — a certified priority document with a verified English translation. Applications go to the Trade Mark Office within the Registrar-General's Department (collective marks go to a specialised section within that office) and are examined on both formal and substantive grounds; accepted applications are advertised for opposition, which may be lodged within two months of advertisement (extendable at the registrar's discretion). Once the opposition period lapses, or any opposition is resolved in the applicant's favour, the mark is registered and a certificate issued. A registered mark may be cancelled if it has not been used for a continuous period of five years after registration. Registration is valid for an initial 10 years and renewable for further 10-year periods. Ghana participates in the Berne Convention, the Harare Protocol, the Lusaka Agreement, the Madrid Protocol (incorporated into Ghanaian law via the Trademarks (Amendment) Act), the Paris Convention, the WIPO Convention, and WTO/TRIPS, and is party to ARIPO's Banjul Protocol, though local enabling legislation for it has not yet been enacted.

Setting up: a practical sequence

1. Choose the entity type and confirm the applicable investment threshold. A private company limited by shares is the standard vehicle; the minimum foreign capital required depends on whether the business is a joint venture with a Ghanaian partner (USD 200,000), wholly foreign-owned (USD 500,000), or a trading enterprise (USD 1 million plus 20 skilled Ghanaian employees).

2. Register with the Office of the Registrar of Companies, appointing at least two directors (one Ghana-resident) and a qualified company secretary, then register with the GIPC if there is foreign participation.

3. Obtain a TIN from the GRA before completing company registration, and register for VAT separately once turnover approaches the GHS 200,000 threshold.

4. Register with SSNIT before hiring any employee, and budget for the 13% employer / 5.5% employee pension contribution split.

5. Secure the remaining non-industry registrations — a business operating permit from the District Assembly, a fire certificate, and Data Protection Commission registration if personal data will be processed — alongside any industry-specific licences.

6. Plan for the immigrant quota system if expatriate staff are needed, sizing the foreign capital contribution against the one-to-four-person quota bands, and apply for additional permits through the Ghana Immigration Service as needed.

7. File trade mark applications in Ghana before or immediately upon market entry, filing a separate application for each class of goods or services given the absence of multi-class filing.

8. Structure related-party financing within the 3:1 debt-to-equity thin-capitalisation limit where the resident company is majority non-resident-owned.

9. Track the 2025 VAT reform proposals — the possible move to a unified ~20% VAT-inclusive rate and a higher small-business registration threshold — since these were still proposals, not settled law, as of the source document's date.

10. For any merger or acquisition, check ECOWAS's regional merger-control regime and the relevant sectoral regulator's own merger rules, since Ghana has no general domestic competition law of its own to fall back on.

• Ghana has no general competition law; the draft Competition Bill has lapsed with no timeline for reintroduction, leaving merger control and prohibited-practices enforcement fragmented across sectoral regulators and ECOWAS.

• Inflation is high, at 17.17%, and government gross debt stands at 66.44% of GDP against government revenue of only 16.02% of GDP — relevant context for pricing and currency-risk planning.

• Foreign investors cannot hold freehold land; land access is capped at a 50-year leasehold at any one time.

• Several 2025 VAT changes were proposed but not yet confirmed as of the source document's date — businesses should verify the current VAT rate and registration threshold before finalising pricing or compliance plans.

• Company secretary and auditor requirements are more prescriptive than in some neighbouring markets, including a mandatory six-year auditor rotation — worth building into governance planning from the outset.

• Restraint-of-trade clauses carry real enforceability risk: they are not prohibited outright, but case law will strike them down if they are not narrowly scoped to protect a legitimate business interest.