Work on the dual carriage Kumasi-Accra highway is set to start before the end of this year, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, Minister of Economic Planning and Regional Co-operation, has announced.
He said the government has secured one-third of the funds for the project. Dr Nduom was addressing the opening ceremony of the three-day Ashanti Economic Forum at the Prempeh Assembly Hall in Kumasi on Tuesday.
The theme for the forum being attended by high profile business executives, bankers, Members of Parliament (MPs), District Chief Executives and traditional rulers, was: "Maximising Ashanti's contribution to the economic development of Ghana".
It is being organised jointly by the Manhyia Palace and the Ashanti Region Co-ordinating Council. Dr Nduom said the first phase of the road project would begin from Accra to Nsawam, adding that if additional money could be found, the lanes would be increased to six.
The Minister told participants at the forum that infrastructure development had been made the topmost priority of the government for the next three years with a view to helping to position the country to take advantage of investment opportunities.
He decried the situation where productive areas in the country happened to be the most deprived and said this was not right. Dr Nduom said it was the view of the government that resources should be put to work in a way that benefit the ordinary people in parts of the country whose riches support the nation.
He mentioned the improvement of the country's energy supply, the telecommunications system and the ports as the main critical areas that, together with the road network constituted, the core of the infrastructure development activities that would be seriously tackled.
Dr Nduom welcomed the forum as a good idea and a positive development and asked that its objectives should fit into the overall national agenda of taking advantage of the fruits of globalisation.
He challenged the forum to come out with ways of shifting the region from being largely producers and exporters of primary products to producers of value added products. Mr Sampson Kwaku Boafo, Ashanti Regional Minister, gave a detailed overview of the vast economic potentials of the region that had remained either under exploited or unexploited.
He mentioned the 350 million metric tonnes of unexploited bauxite deposits at Nyinahin in the Atwima District, large clay deposits and tourism potentials as some of the areas where investors could go into.
The Regional Minister spoke of plans to resuscitate the bast-fibre factory in Kumasi to save the country from importing sacks with its hard earned foreign currency. Mr Boafo announced that arrangements had been made to ensure ready market for cashew and sunflower and asked the people to take seriously to their production.
Nana Otuo Serebour II, Omanhene of Juaben Traditional Area and a Member of the Council of State, who chaired the opening ceremony, asked that the district assemblies should be mandated to use part of stool land revenue and the District Assemblies' Common Fund they receive to engage consultants to identify economically viable projects in their areas.
This, he noted, could help investors to make decisions on where to put their monies. Nana Otuo Serebour urged the participants to come out with ''home grown'' solutions that would be acceptable to the people and help to boost the economy of the region and that of the nation.
