I want to wean GEPA off gov’t subvention — Gideon Quarcoo

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Mr Gideon. Quarcoo (GQ), is passionate about using the authority to support the creation of an export-led economy that will provide more jobs for people. Maxwell Akalaare Adombila had a chat with him about his life, exports, and the way forward for GEPA.

GB: What is the mandate of GEPA?

GQ: GEPA was established by an Act of Parliament in 1969. It is tasked with developing, promoting and marketing Ghana's non-traditional exports (NTEs). NTEs are those exports that have come since we started exporting cocoa beans, timber log, minerals and so on which are the primary exports. Now, any thing that we add value to, for example cocoa powder, cocoa butter, paste are the NTEs. So, by definition, a NTE is a value added traditional export. So far, we have approximately 400 NTEs that we deal with and they are broken into categories; agriculture, artifacts, services, manufacturing and semi-manufacturing, among others and the GEPA is tasked with overseeing the marketing, promotion and placement of these products on the international markets.

GB: What is the state of the NTEs sector in the country?

GQ: It is an industry that has grown over the years. Up until 2007, Ghana had not hit one billion dollars of  earnings from NTEs. In 2007, we turned that corner and we have not looked back. Last year, we took in US$2.436 billion as revenues from the sector but even that figure did not include the amount earned from the services sector because the sector was not formally enrolled into the revenue base. Now, we are working on capturing that and I can guarantee that when that is captured and the loopholes plugged, the total earnings from NTEs will go even beyond the current figure that we have. So, in terms of my assessment of the sector, I will say Ghana and for that matter the GEPA are hungry to grow NTEs and the GEPA is well positioned to do that.

GB: What should Ghana do to satisfy this hunger to grow earnings from NTEs?

GQ: I think one major intervention we need to do is value addition in agro-processing. We need to add value to what used to be our traditional exports by transforming them into new usable products and so on. Agro-processing has to do with applying technology towards getting new products so that if you had a mango, you can transform it into cut or dried mango, mango jam, juice and so on. Those kinds of things are the ones we need to do. It will create jobs, spur growth and the bottom line; it will add more to our export revenues as a country. So, there is a lot more value addition, agro-processing and manufacturing that we need to do as a country.

GB: What is GEPA’s strategy  to ensure that we benefit fully from services exports, which is being added to the NTEs sectors that we currently have?

GQ: First, we needed to create awareness on what we mean by service exports. You know, the word is so common that people are likely to misinterpret it into what it is not. By service exports, we talking about the general consulting field, medical, tertiary education, ICT and multi-media, among others.

We are almost at the end of creating the awareness and also making the linkages with the primary producers and the major enterprises within the service space. We are also almost at the end of creating a services directorate, which will be the first ever publication in Ghana. It will list all the service providers in each category and we will refine it as the years roll by. Importantly, however, we realised we needed to bring service providers onto a platform and discuss with them how we can help and facilitate for them to enter the service export market.

We have done that for people in the ICT field and I think that has been a good beginning and we will do similar meetings with other providers in the other sectors. 

GB: Regarding the National Export Strategy (NES), is GEPA certain of meeting the requirements. And what are the strategies the authority is adopting to achieve that?

GQ: Yeah, we are almost ready with the work plan for 2015. We have developed action plan for 2015 covering a wide array of export areas from horticulture to things like cashew, mango and so on all the way to cocoa, shea butter and fisheries. We are currently holding stakeholder validating meetings to see the enterprises that we are going to support so they can increase their volumes and maintain good standards. So, the NES is going to be a key thing, the GEPA is a key driver of it but it involves about 16 or more institutions working collaboratively with us. 

GB: Getting US$5 billion from NTEs, as the NES stipulates, is a lot of money. Will GEPA be able to meet this target, looking at our current earnings, which stands at US$2.4?

GQ: US$5 billion can be a lot of money if you think it is not attainable. It can also not be too much if you think you can do more than that. US$5 was a reasonable target at the time it was set, looking at the pace that our revenues grew prior to that. But you and I know what has happened since then; there have been some economic downturns globally, some of which have affected us locally and there has been Ebola, which resulted in the cancellation of five major fairs in West Africa. So, those things can collectively impact on our fortunes because those fairs that we could not participate in, you can be sure that the revenues from them will not be available to be counted. That aside, the target time for the US$5 billion is 2017 and we are going to work very hard towards attaining it. It is a very ambitious goal but its achievable. 

GB: As the CEO, what is your vision for the authority and the NTE sector in general?

GQ: My vision is to reorganise the place consistent with the NES. We need to beef up certain departments like the Product Development Unit, we need to establish a whole new Monitoring and Evaluation Department and we need to grow the different segments within the authority to effectively work with the stakeholders. My overall vision for GEPA is that one of these days, it will be an income generating institution that can charge money for the services it renders so that there will be less of reliance on government subvention to operate. Currently, it is not generating enough funds by itself. We sign certificates for exporters and we charge them for that but it is hardly enough to even cater for the minor expenses that the authority incurs. So, I will like to see an authority that earns its way or at least partially and that will effectively police the export sector for the nation. The bottom-line of that vision is job creation such that everybody can find jobs and people will stay in the hinterlands because there are jobs there instead of flocking to the cities to find some. 

GB: Who is Mr Quarcoo?

GQ: I am the CEO of GEPA. Prior to that, I was the Deputy Minister of Communications under Prof Mills. Before that too I was a private management consultant, I had my own consultancy firm, Midezor Consult. I worked in the USA for many years and I attended Emerson University in Boston. My area of specialisation is communication. I have four daughters, one is a lawyer in the USA and three are with me here in Ghana. 

GB: What motivated your return to Ghana? 

GQ: I came back home after some 30 years in the USA because I want to serve my nation. You can stay overseas and become an old man at which point you would have no energy, no vision and probably just waiting to die and you come back home. That is a tragedy. I wanted to come home so I could have an impact and get to meet a few young people who I could sponsor. I like to meet young people and sponsor them into school. That has been my passion since I came back home and I have put a number of people in the likes of Ashesi University, University of Ghana, University of Cape Coast, University for Development Studies and the likes. I also have some in senior high school and even in junior high. 

I believe that you must share a little bit of yourself and show people the power of your example and not the example of your power. Very often, when we feel we have become important as many of us do, we like to show people the example of our power and unfortunately, that is a model for disaster. If you show the power of your example, then you may inspire some people and that, to me, is what service should be about.