The government is being urged to collaborate with the various telecommunication companies to design special data packages that small businesses and startups can afford. To help the government achieve this, it can impose a 1 percent tax on selected goods and services.
The proceeds of the tax collected could go into subsidise data costs for businesses. This could also support the government’s attempt at providing free data services for senior high schools. The free data services could be then extended to other public places.
These ideas were contained in a policy brief document compiled after a stakeholders’ meeting held at the Dansyn Innovation Social Organisation (Dansyn ISO) in Bolgatanga; the Upper East Regional Capital.
The meeting focused on “the Role of E-Commerce in Transforming Local Economy for Job Creation and Economic Development.”
“As part of the policies to ensure businesses are operating to the best of the country, the government should introduce a 1% tax to assist in purchasing free data for all business owners ensuring they can search for information with no stress and also spending less. Nonetheless, regional political leaders could negotiate a reduced mobile data price for startups and small business enterprises as they cannot afford the full price as compared to the big businesses. A special mobile data package should be designed and engineered to suit startups and small business enterprises’ needs as they can purchase exactly the data they want or need, as and when needed, and the amount needed,” portions of the document read.
Stakeholders also proposed to the government to introduce e-commerce education in schools.
“The Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) and the Municipal Assembly should create and maintain training centres such as Dansyn ISO to help train startups and small business enterprises to boost their E-Commerce skills. Educating the youth in schools and also entrepreneurs in E-Commerce in a proper way will ensure the development of the market pillar in the region starting at an early stage.”
“The Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA) must make available E-Commerce platforms to support all entrepreneurs and businesses throughout all levels of education helping to boost involvement in the expanding and improvement of businesses in form of communication, business transactions.”
Background
As part of the Pathways to Sustainable Employment, Ghana Tech Lab in partnership with Dansyn Innovation Social Organization organized a stakeholder gathering to collate ideas on the potential and the role of web development technology in the local digital economy and also how it propels youth employment in our community. This engagement was pivotal to delivering a policy document that would feed into the development of a well-structured and informed curriculum and ultimately, a roadmap for achieving a local digital economy through web application technology in Ghana.
The meeting brought key stakeholders together to outline the skills gap, challenges, opportunities, strategies and policies for transforming the local economy to achieve sustainable development through digital skills and entrepreneurship within the Upper East Region and beyond.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Ghana
