GEPA identifies 11 products for export

The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has identified 11 priority products to enhance Ghana’s export cash flow. The products include tubers, aquaculture, services, handicraft and a focus on the authority’s 10-year development programme on cashew.

The Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GEPA, Mr Eric Amoako Twum, made this known at the launch of the second phase of the National Export Strategy in Kumasi.

The export strategy is targeted at identifying, developing and promoting at least one exportable product from each district of the country and is expected to fit conveniently into the government’s industrialisation concept of ‘one-district, one-factory’.

If successful, the programme will serve to complement, as well as sustain the one-district, one-factory concept.

There are 23 programmes that are being considered under the strategy. They cover  water, energy, trade, agriculture, finance and local government.

The first phase of the National Export Strategy saw GEPA visiting five regions, namely the Eastern, Volta, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.

According to Mr Amoako Twum, Ghana has all it takes to be an export hub in the West African sub-region and to transform into a developed country.

Throwing more light on the programme, he said, GEPA had set an ambitious target to raise at least $10 billion in four years from the export of the targeted commodities.

He noted that the strategy sought to augment the performance of existing export products and identify additional articles with significant export potential in the districts.

“The GEPA is currently undergoing certain structural and fundamental realignment to enable it to handle new responsibilities that would be thrust upon us,” he said.

The GEPA is also seeking to establish regional offices to assist with the implementation of the one-district, one-factory concept.

The Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister, Madam Elizabeth Agyemang, was hopeful that the programme would provide the impetus for business-minded people to venture into the production of locally manufactured goods for both local and global consumption, as well as improve the country’s trade balance.