Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo has said that government will revamp about 75 distressed companies as part of the one-district, one-factory programme.
According to the Minister, government has identified and is ready to rescue companies that have seen difficult times during their operations and have been forced into dormancy.
“Already we have identified about 75 such companies who must aided to go into proper production because their problems could be working capitals, their problems could be location. Their problems were initially power outages. We had about four years of power crisis and many factories closed down,” Osafo Maafo said.
Addressing development partners at the 2017 IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington D.C, the Senior Minister said, most of the factories to be built under the one-district, one-factory programme will be agro-based because Ghana has arable land for agriculture productivity.
He explained that government launched the planting for food and jobs programme prior to the one-district, one-factory to ensure that there is constant flow of raw materials to feed the factories.
“Obviously if we’re talking about one-district, one-factory, most of the factories are likely to be agriculture-based because the country is naturally an agrarian country. Parallel to this we have launched planting for food and jobs, meaning that the government wants to strengthen the agriculture base to enable us let this one-district, one-factory takes off properly,” he said.
The Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo is the leader of the Ghana delegation to the 2017 IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington D.C.
The delegation made up of Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, Planning Minister Prof Djan Bafour, Deputy Finance Minister Charlse Adu Boahen and Deputy Minister for Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah is expected to showcase Ghana’s recent economic recovery efforts to international development partners as well as hold talks with stakeholders to secure more international support for Ghana ahead of the 2018 Budget.
The BoG Governor, Dr Addisson and his first Deputy Maxwell Afari as well as a team of technical advisors from the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Ghana are also with the delegation.
The team will be pitching Ghana’s new economic policy direction and inviting support from the global finance and development community.
The annual IMF/World Bank meetings are a platform to engage global finance and development agencies to secure commitment and support for a country’s economic and development agenda.
Ghana’s recent participation in similar international events have brought benefits such as inclusion in the G20 compact which will provide 120 Million Euro for the country.
The team is expected to return to Ghana by October 18, 2017.
