Private Sector Advisory Group will spur economic growth - CEO

Mrs Kate Quartey-Papafio, the Chief Executive Officer of Reroy Cables, said the establishment of the CEOs Private Sector Advisory Group would stimulate economic development of the country.

The Group was borne out of the CEOs breakfast meeting on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hosted by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House in July 2018.

It is made up of eight CEOs and captains of industry with the objective of identifying core sets of practical and joint actions that they could undertake in support of the national SDGs efforts, and develop innovative financing solutions in support of SDGs implementation.

It focuses on six goals classified as core areas that would drive the private sector’s contribution to the SDGs.

These are Quality Education (Goal-4), Clean Water and Sanitation (Goal-6), Affordable and Clean Energy (Goal-7), Decent Work and Economic Growth (Goal-8), Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (Goal-9), and Responsible Production and Consumption (Goal-12).

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mrs Quartey-Papafio, a member of the Group, said post COVID-19 would see it play a significant role in helping to restore the growth of the economy for sustained national development.

She explained that those goals were interconnected and could work together to deliver growth and unprecedented development for the good people of the country.

Mrs Quartey-Papafio said the Group intended to establish SDGs Delivery Fund, which would pool a significant proportion of the private sector’s corporate social responsibility budget to support the goals.

It had also declared its commitment to establish a Private Sector-led Green Fund, with a target of one billion Ghana cedis over five years, as a source of innovative financing to meet the SDGs agenda.

A key objective of the Green Fund is to drive change and transition individual, private and public sector institutions from traditional to renewable sources of energy.

She said the goals were anchored in the vision that would make businesses self-reliant in economic transformation, inclusive growth and the realisation of the goals and delivered through five result areas and cross-cutting priorities.

Mrs Quartey-Papafio emphasized that all corporate organisations working in the country should make it a priority to support these projects and contribute towards the Fund.

She pledged her unflinching support to the Group to ensure that the target on rural renewable energy initiative and specific environmentally sustainable projects were achieved comprehensively.