AGI wants incentives to make Ghana’s industries competitive in export market
The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), the lead agency for the implementation of the National Export Development Strategy has organized a one day NEDS/AfCFTA conference in Accra.
The workshop brought together key public and private sector actors that play significant roles in exports and the continental free trade in Ghana, to analyse the strategic interventions necessary for the success of the export development strategy.
At the plenary session of the stakeholder workshop, the various stakeholders enumerated a number of initiatives that will inure to Ghana’s success under the Continental Free Trade Area.
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) was one of such institutions to make recommendations.
The CEO of AGI, Seth Twum Akwaboah called for the review of the cross subsidy in Ghana’s electricity tariff regime in order to bring relief to industries and help them compete.
“Part of electricity tariffs at the residential level is subsidized by industry. This policy was introduced some many years ago when industry was taking away about 70% of the electricity generated. But now, the residential usage has gone up by about 50% or more yet, we are being asked to subsidize for residential usage. Electricity cost in Ghana is one of the highest on the continental level and beyond,” he lamented.
Likewise, he called for improvement in interest rates for borrowing.
He also shared his opinion on why Ghana’s cocoa processing industry is struggling among other strategic sectors.
“Interestingly, cocoa processing and chocolate production is one of the key strategic areas we are targeting, and there are always questions why we are not processing enough. It will interest you to know that cocoa as a raw material constitutes only 30% of the cost in chocolate production. There are various other things that go into it such as milk, sugar, and the flavours, none of which we produce in this country. The moment we add value, the duty in Europe goes up. This is one of the challenges,” the CEO of AGI added.
Kwame Jantuah, an AGI member also called for the upscaling of Ghana’s industrial salt production due to Ghana’s competitive advantage in that commodity.
He said, “the export potential of industrial salt is huge. Countries who have excess snow during winter for example need this salt to melt the snow on their streets. Salt makes more money than oil and gas. Nigeria alone can take up all our salt production, but now they import from Brazil while they are just next door.”
