Parliament has passed the 24-Hour Economy Authority Bill, 2025, to establish the 24-Hour Economy Authority in a bid spur Ghana’s economic transformation.
The passage of the bill provides the regulatory regime and the legal mandate for the formalisation and implementation of the 24-hour economy.
The authority is to implement the 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme of the government, a national economic transformation strategy aimed at enhancing productivity and promoting inclusive growth.
It will lead and coordinate the myriad policies, strategies, programmes, and activities that will be implemented to transform the country into an economy that is working 24 hours.
If the President assents to the bill, the bill will seek to address long-standing structural issues within the productive economy of the country.
It will further seek to reduce the dependence of the country on exporting relatively low-value raw materials and reliance on costly imported finished and intermediate goods.
This is expected to end more commodity value leaving the economy with each productive cycle, thus ultimately contributing to ending a cyclical crisis that hampered national development.
The bill, which enjoyed bi-partisan support from both sides of the House, was laid in the House by the Deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Dr Justice Srem-Sai, on December 3, 2025, and it was referred to the Committee on Constitution and Legal Affairs for consideration.
Creating jobs for youthful population
Soon after it had been passed by the House, the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, told the press in Parliament that the passage was a fulfilment of the promise to transform the economy to become a major employer, providing jobs and livelihoods for the millions of youth.
He said such transformation partly hinged on the implementation of the 24-hour economy model, an economic model that would see the country work 24 hours.
He said if the country was working 24 hours, more labour would be needed to work the 24 hours based on several shifts.
“There will be the shift that will be during the daytime and there will be the shift that will work during the nighttime.
“The idea behind it is to create jobs and opportunities for our youthful population, many of whom have graduated from universities and because the economy has been bad for the past eight years, jobs were not being created,” he said.
The Tamale Central pointed out that jobs had been flying out of the country due to excess taxation, financial crisis, high inflation, financial sector clean-up and volatile currency situation that led to many factories opting to leave the country to go and relocate at places where there was better stability.
“And so many people were in the unemployed, and you recall the implementation of the financial sector cleanup, which led to the collapse of financial institutions. Hundreds of thousands of people, directly and indirectly, lost their jobs, and we took over on the back of such an economic mess. And so unemployment is a major issue, and the National Democratic Congress admits that we have a problem of unemployment.
Mr Ayariga said the government had injected capital into the financial sector, with banks such as ADB, National Investment Bank and all the government banks having received major capital injection, running into billions of Ghana cedis.
“These financial institutions are going to make money available for the private sector,” he said.
Duplication of functions
During a debate on the bill last Wednesday, the Ranking Member on Economy and Development Committee, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, argued that the establishment of the 24-Hour Authority was a duplication of the functions already performed by existing ministries such as the Ministry of Trade, Agribusiness and Innovation and agencies such as the Ghana Export Promotion Authority.
He also criticised the 24-hour economy policy document, but urged the Majority Caucus to ensure the timely delivery of future policy documents to allow proper scrutiny.
