Ghana woos China to invest in manufacturing sector

Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Trade and Industry has called on China to invest into priority areas especially the agro-processing and light manufacturing sectors, to boost the growth of the Ghanaian economy.

“We want investors to take advantage of the numerous raw materials we have around us. We need to improve and strengthen our food processing, packaging industries and light manufacturing and China has the technology and resources to help us to do that,” the Minister said

Dr. Spio-Garbrah made the call when the Chinese Ambassador, Sung Baohongh, paid a courtesy call on him in Accra.

The meeting discussed the new cooperation guidelines, which was issued by the National Development and Reform Committee and the Ministry of Commerce of China.

The guidelines call for “cooperation in production capacity and equipment manufacturing that will involve moving Chinese production lines to other countries and Chinese companies setting up factories with local partners abroad”.

The guidelines also identifies a list of 12 sectors including iron and steel, non-ferrous metal, building materials, railways, electricity, chemical, textile, automobile, communication, construction machinery, aviation, ship and ocean engineering, as the key sectors to promote the co-operation.

“As the largest developing country, China has the obligation, commitment and capabilities to provide impetus for the development of other developing countries through bilateral cooperation in areas such as infrastructure and technological transfer,” the Ambassador stated.

Ms Baohongh took the opportunity to invite the Minister to lead a delegation from Ghana to attend the World Investment Forum which would be held in Fujian Province in China in September.

The Minister proposed to organise an investment forum on Ghana on the margins of the World Investment Forum to enable some of the more than 5,000 participants at the forum to focus their attention on the country.

Ministry of Trade statistics indicates that China is Ghana’s second largest trading partner after Europe and Ghana is the seventh largest trading partner of China among African countries.

China is by far Ghana’s largest supplier of imports, supplying 18.3 per cent of Ghana’s imports worth some $2,096 billion in 2013.

China is Ghana’s ninth largest export destination, accounting for 2.2 per cent of exports worth $ 420 million in 2013.

Ghana’s exports to China are dominated by traditional or primary exports, such as unprocessed cocoa, raw metals, wood products, and petroleum oils, which account for 96 per cent of exports to the Asian nation.