“Add value to boost Ghana’s exports trade”

The Ashanti Regional Minister, Hon. Peter Anarfi Mensah, has underscored the need for local manufacturers and exporters to improve on the value of exports from the country, in order to position the country to gain competitive advantage in the exports market.

He said Ghana stands the chance to take a leading role in the exports trade if the quality of exports abroad is significantly improved.

He said a lot more has to be done, particularly those in the manufacturing sector, to enhance the ‘finishing and packaging’ of goods and other items exported from the country, while also shifting from the traditional export to non-traditional export trade.

The Ashanti Regional Minister, who said this at the visit of the Chief Executive Officer of the Export Trade, Agriculture and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF), Dr. Bafour Osei, and some officials, at the Regional Coordinating Council, in Kumasi, called on the youths to embrace activities of the Fund.

He said EDAIF has the capacity to massively reduce the unemployment situation in the country, and thus charged the youth to bring their resourcefulness to bare and take advantage of the existence of the Fund to enter into productive ventures.

The former educationist also waded into the calls for a paradigm shift in focus of the country’s educational delivery system to one that equip students with the necessary entrepreneurial skills.

He was very optimistic that the Fund, in the not too distant future, would be able to turn round the economic fortunes of the country as he relentlessly urged the youth to go into agriculture production.

He pledged the support and readiness of his outfit to collaborate and corporate with the Fund, in whatever direction, to ensure the success of the operations of the Fund in the Ashanti Region and beyond. 

The CEO of EDAIF, Dr. Bafour Osei, explained EDAIF has undertaken a number of initiatives, in addition to pursuing the mandate of the Fund, to also help to tackle the country’s unemployment situation.

He said for example that the EDAIF contributed the seed capital for the establishment of the Youth Entrepreneurship Support Fund, launched by President John Dramani Mahama in the beginning of the year, as well as a Graduate Entrepreneurship initiative, which targets products of the various tertiary institutions in the country.

He said the Graduate Entrepreneurship initiative is intended to support and empower graduates with innovative ideas through an incubation system to help them to develop bankable projects which could also offer employment opportunities to others.

He consequently said EDAIF has received a number of applications with this initiative, with a number of applicants from the Ashanti Region, and are being evaluated for the award of the sponsorship likely by July 2015.

Dr. Osei also disclosed that in addition to these initiatives, the Fund has also come up with a Cassava Project to look at the industrial use of cassava. He said this Project in its first phase has targeted at those in the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and Northern Regions.

He said it is planned to produce cassava floor as an industrial product which will run on a simple module whereby some key people would be expected on board to setup processing facilities and work together with other out-growers to ensure sustained production.