The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), plans to review its Technology Transfer Regulation to make it current and reflect best practices.
As a result, GIPC has called on businesses that have dealings with parent companies abroad to provide some services to ensure their agreements are registered with the centre.
The centre indicated that, it is important for companies to meet the legal requirement and comply with the law.
Mrs Naa Lamle Orleans-Lindsay, Head of Legal at GIPC, said services such as industrial property, technical expertise, knowhow and managerial services were the four general areas under the GIPC law that needed to be registered.
According to her, if there is such an agreement between a local company and a foreign company then the company must register it with GIPC.
She explained that, most of the agreement that came to the GIPC were between parent company and subsidiaries in Ghana, which do not have the same bargaining power.
The law she said, protects local companies making sure that all the necessary ingredients protecting them are in the agreement.
It insists that, if the services a company needs are available in Ghana, they cannot be the subject of a TTA, where monies would be transferred outside the country.
This she says is because the law encourages local companies to use local services.
“Transfer of fees is a key issue; local companies are converting their revenue to foreign currencies and taking it out of the country, and this has a huge effect on the cedis,” she said.
However, Mrs Orleans-Lindsay noted that the law basically provides a threshold for transfer of fees.
She revealed that even though it does not say how much a company can transfer, it stipulates that companies should not transfer above a percentage of their net sales.
This according to her, is of national interest since the practice involves tax invasion and tax avoidance, among others.
She said going forward, GIPC would have a close collaboration with the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Revenue Authority to ensure compliance of the TTR.
Mr Kwame Owusu, Head of Transfer Pricing Unit, Ghana Revenue Authority also encouraged companies to stop flouting the law and register their agreements with the GIPC.
