Meshal Hamdan Al-Rogi
The Saudi Arabian authorities are working towards the visit to Ghana by a business delegation from the oil-rich nation.
Plans for the visit were put on hold due to travel restrictions occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Saudi envoy in Ghana who is also accredited to Togo, Meshal Hamdan Al-Rogi, the visit was brokered when the Ghanaian Foreign Affairs Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey visited Riyadh and wooed the business community in the Kingdom to pitch camp in Ghana.
In a release, the Ambassador said “with ease in travel restrictions, appropriate plan are underway to get this visit to materialise,” adding “this would create an appropriate forum for interactions between Saudi investors and the Ghanaian business community in sha Allah.”
Saudi Arabia and Ghana, he said, are both making giant steps towards making bilateral promising and enticing investors as well as shoring up trade volumes.
Both countries, he observed, can tap from the dividends of cooperation in areas of common interest. “Sectors such as agriculture, oil and gas, tourism and education are very promising areas in which the two countries need to step up efforts in building for their mutual growth,” he pointed out.
The envoy recalled how the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) has supported many infrastructural projects in Ghana, one of them being the expansion and rehabilitation of the Bolgatanga Hospital with a grant of $20 million.
Other projects sponsored by the SFD, he said, include Kpone Hydro-Electric Power project, the renovation of the Tema and Takoradi seaports, the Northern Region Grid Power Expansion project and the Tetteh Quarshie to Mamfe road. Others he pointed are the Accra College of Science and the construction of the Phase One of the Trauma and Acute Care Centre of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, all totaling an amount of $124.269m.
Ghanaian Muslims, he said, have so far benefitted from the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre which has given them medical equipment and an annual donation of 50 tonnes of date fruits since 2013.
Saudi Arabia and Ghana have a long-standing relationship dating back to the 60s when the latter attained independence.
Besides infrastructure, the Kingdom has offered many scholarships to Ghanaian students to study in fields that go beyond religion but cover the sciences and arts in various universities in Saudi Arabia.
By A.R. Gomda