Ghana Export Promotion Authority holds Exporters’ forum

The Ministry of Trade and Industry in collaboration with other Ministries, Departments and Agencies has developed a three-year Business Regulation strategy (BRS) aimed at modernising the legal and regulatory systems.

This is to promote faster growth, job creation and economic prosperity.

Mr Carlos Ahenkorah, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, who announced this on Wednesday, said the strategy was designed to be systemic and permanent in its effects by changing how the government designs and implements business regulations in the future.

“Within the broader national economic reform agenda, the BRS aims to eliminate constraints to economic development, deepen and broaden current reform efforts in order to establish a national regulatory environment that sustainably reduces red-tape and barriers and better promote private sector activity and job creation,” he said.

The Deputy Minister was delivering the keynote address at the 77th National Exporters’ Forum in Accra on the theme: “Supporting the Non-Traditional Export Sector for Economic Transformation.”

The Exporters’ Forum is a common platform for the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) to enable exporters and trade officials to discuss and find solutions to challenges along the value chain of the export business.

Mr Ahenkorah said the NTEs comprised a considerable number of products and there was the need to develop a broader export base using the country’s comparative strength in agri-business, minerals, service, oil and other areas.

He said it was about time measures were implemented to move the NTEs forward and lauded the initiatives GEPA was adopting to increase export earnings and reinvigorate the sector.

He urged exporters to register and renew their exporter businesses with GEPA through the Ghana’s Trade Hub Single Window Platform to help in the formulation of programmes to support exporters.

Mr Ahenkorah urged the exporters to position themselves to be able to take advantage of the continental free trade area in Africa, likely to come into force in 2018.

Ms Gifty Kekeli Klenam, Chief Executive Officer, GEPA, said non-traditional exports hold the key to Ghana’s export diversification drive.

She said Ghana’s inability to achieve that could be attributed partly to reactive and fragmented exports that were insufficiently funded.

Ms Klenam said despite Ghana’s subscription to regional and multilateral trade agreements, the non-existence of its own policy document on export promotion strategy partly explains why Ghana could not take full advantage of these agreements.

It is in this direction and furtherance to the strategic objective of the National Export Strategy that, GEPA had set its strategic objective of increasing the contribution of non-traditional exports from the current $2.4 billion to $10 billion.

To achieve this, she said, GEPA had developed and launched a comprehensive four-year work plan towards the development of identified key priority products notable amongst which were pineapple, cashew, shea and yam with comprehensive sectorial intervention programmes, and implementable action plans aimed at achieving the strategic target of $10 billion.

She said the plan formed part of GEPAs initiatives in response to increasing the dwindling supply base of exportable products, through the development of new and improved seedlings for planting to improve the competitiveness of Ghanaian products in both local and international markets.

She said the implementation of the work plans would enable GEPA achieve a significant increase in the share of NTEs in total exports as a major step towards structural transformation of the export sector for spearheading growth and diversification of the Ghanaian economy.

“Strengthen and resource export development related institutions and networks of business development service providers, policies and programmes for providing well-focused and enhanced support services to enable export businesses to flourish.

“To drive this initiative, GEPA has budgeted an amount of ¢4.2 million to implement the activities of this project,” she said.