Ghana, United States deal
The Governments of Ghana and United States of America have signed another major deal.
The deal was signed by Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta and the US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross at the Jubilee House yesterday.
It was witnessed by President Akufo-Addo and the Ministers for Trade and Industry and Energy, Alan Kyerematen and Boakye Agyarko.
Briefing the media after the event, Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, disclosed that Mr Ross was in the country with 60 other businessmen and representatives of federal agencies to engage Ghanaian businessmen and government on a number of investment opportunities.
“So the MoU you saw being signed was to outline some of these opportunities and to commit both sides to jointly invest in these opportunities; some of these investments will be on the public-public side, some of it on the public-private side, some of it on the private-private site as well,” he revealed.
The Deputy Minister said the deal covers 11 areas, including agriculture, industry, infrastructure, railway, energy, saying “we are looking to some more American organisations to take spots, particularly in the upstream petroleum sector.”
“For all of these things that we are jointly doing or we will be doing with them, the idea is to speed up our rate of growth to ensure that there a lot of jobs in it; wealth is created in there and eventually we are able to transform our society using instruments such as this,” he said.
He was hopeful the direct discussions would benefit the two countries.
Ghana first signed a major deal with the US during the tenure of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, which saw the construction of the Akosombo Dam and establishment of Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO) by Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical (KACC).
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent