AGOA to offer duty-free exports to USA

The Ministry of Trade and Industry is set to promote foreign direct investments and leverage Ghanaian exports to the US market through the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) review strategy.

The strategy, to be rolled out September this year, will allow 30 Ghanaian exporting companies duty-free products to the United States market.

At an export-ready sensitisation workshop, Director of Multilateral, Regional and Bilateral Trade of the Trade and Industry Ministry, Anthony Nyamekye-Baafi, told Class Business the initiative would help government support local exporting companies.

“The big companies already exporting to AGOA markets, we tried to give them some leverage so that they can double or triple their production into the AGOA market. Then, for the second approach, we are going to build the capacity of Ghanaian companies, exporters who are exporting local products into the EU market, and then also identify potential ones who can export to the EU market so that when we build their capacity and support them with some financial concessional funding and other things, they can also export,” he stated.

On his part, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mark Badu-Aboagye told Class Business exporters would enjoy duty-free exports of more than 6,400 products into the US market.

“For a country like Ghana, we have qualified but for individuals, they have to go through a series of activities to be able to qualify as I’ve made mention of the quality, the standards, documentations and other things to be able to export under AGOA… AGOA offers us as a country duty-free, quota-free access to the US market for close to 6400 products. So, you are exporting to USA without paying any duty, which means that it gives you a competitive advantage over other countries or an individual, who is also exporting from another country which is not under AGOA, into the USA. The person will be paying duties; you will not be paying duties and, of course, in terms of pricing, you will become more competitive because that component of duty is taken out,” he noted.