Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia
Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on Thursday announced that 79 projects under the One District, One Factory (1D1F) initiative, which are at different stages of implementation, would be rolled out by the end of this year.
He said additional 35 projects were undergoing credit appraisal to ensure that they receive financial support for smooth take-off.
Vice President Dr Bawumia announced this at the opening of the Second Stakeholders’ Conference on Economic Diplomacy in Accra.
The Vice President said the Akufo-Addo government cannot achieve the overriding “Ghana Beyond Aid” objective with wishful thinking, but strong policies on the ground.
He declared that the government has created a conducive macro-economic environment for potential investors to leverage on for smooth take-off in order to propel the country’s industrialization agenda.
The three-day event on the theme: “Leveraging Economic Diplomacy for Ghana’s Industrialisation Agenda,” attracted the diplomatic community in Ghana, Ministers of State, policy-makers and captains of industries.
The conference, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), provided the platform for stakeholders to share information, deepen understanding on government policies and proffer workable solutions to the country’s economic challenges aimed at achieving the industrialisation agenda.
The dialogue would focus on the strategies for the promotion of made-in-Ghana goods and services, the 10-point strategies on industrialization developed by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, as well as to strategise on how Ghana could position herself to benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement and attract Direct Foreign Investments.
Vice President Dr Bawumia said there was an urgent need to focus on attracting trade and investments into the national economy, saying that government had launched the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ programme and operationalised the Ghana Commodity Exchange to promote private sector investment in industry and agriculture sectors, which would contribute to the transformation of the economy.
To attract the desired investments into the country, he indicated that it was prudent to create macro-economic stability and a suitable business environment that would make the nation competitive on the global market.
In that regard, he stated that upon assumption of office, the government, through prudent economic policies, stabilised the macroeconomy, increased economic growth from 3.7 per cent in 2016 to 8.5 at the end of 2017, agriculture growth moved upwards from three per cent to 8.4 in 2017, and industry growth went up from a negative five per cent to 16.7 per cent.
The Vice President said that the fiscal deficit declined from 9.3 per cent in 2016 to 5.9 per cent in 2017; year-on-year inflation tumbled from 15.4 in 2016 and currently hovering at 9.5 percent, while the interest rate had been on the decline.
He disclosed that the trade position with the rest of the world, which was at a deficit of $1.4 billion in 2016, improved to a surplus of $ 1 billion in 2017.
In spite of the gains, he said, it was not sufficient to achieve the “Ghana Beyond Aid” objective, and stressed the need to do things differently to attain that vision.
In view of that, he disclosed that the government had taken deliberate steps to formalize the economy by leveraging on technology to help propel the economy to a different level through digitization.
Some of those measures include the issuance of the National Identification Cards that would uniquely identify everybody in the country, National Digital Property Addressing System, Electronic Registration of Businesses, Paperless Ports System, National Emergency Number, Mobile Money Interoperability Payment System and e-Smart Driver and Vehicle Registration.
“These are the measures we’re undertaking to formalize the economy and propel the development of the country and give us the data that we require to move us forward as a nation,” Dr Bawumia stated.
Vice President Dr Bawumia was of the view that the measures would ensure discipline in the management of the country’s economy and make the nation competitive in global trade.
GNA