We are arresting the declining Cedi - President

Government is taking measures to arrest the recent decline in the value of the Cedi, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has assured.

Speaking at the commissioning of the Fujian Sentuo Ceremic Tile Company Limited (FSCTCL) at the Tema Heavy Industrial Area, President Akufo-Addo asked Ghanaians, particularly the business community, to keep faith with government as it spared no effort to contain the situation.

"I'm aware of the anxiety there is, business circles and through the population about the recent depreciation of the cedi. I am extremely upset and anxious about it too.

"I want to assure you all efforts are being made to arrest the decline of and restore the cedi to stability in order to improve the competitiveness of Ghanaian business. And I think that very soon we will be seeing the results of our policy," the President asserted.

President Akufo-Addo described the establishment of the Fujian ceramic tile factory, which is expected to employ over 5000 people, as "a very good indication of where we want to go to."

He said the investment that was another sign of the excellent relations that exist between Ghana and China and "I want to congratulate the managers and promoters of Fijian Sentuo Ceremic Tile Factory for this significant investment in our economy.

"We are determined to modernise our economy and we can only do so if we are able to attract investments into our industrial and manufacturing sector," he said.

The FSCTCL, a private limited liability company, manufactures wall and vitrified tiles. The company intends sourcing 90 percent of its raw materials locally. Thus, it is expected that the move would lead to import substitution and value addition.

President Akufo-Addo said such developments would rapidly expand and modernise Ghana's economy.

He was happy that the promoters of the tile factory were taking advantage of government’s flagship One District, One Factory policy in the establishment of the facility, saying, "We want to achieve a significant level of industrial development."

The President said the bottlenecks to the ease of doing business in Ghana were being addressed holistically.

"We commenced immediately after my assumption of office to put in place a programme of industrial transformation agenda, anchored on a 10 point plan, which seeks to address some of the structural challenges confronting the private sector and its ability to spearhead the industrial development of our country.

"Some of those are the high cost of doing business, lack of access to medium and long-term financing, poor infrastructure and logistic support for enterprises in commercial activities, inadequate skilled-manpower, and limited access to technology, innovation and research.

He continued: "All of these are being addressed by policies of government as seek we to bring down interest rates so that we increase the ability of businesses to fund their activities where we are putting in place new arrangements for both our Agricultural Development Bank and the National Investment Bank so that it can be more focused on providing the funds for medium and long-term investments in our industrial development."

The President disclosed that extensive infrastructural development would soon be rolled out across the country to address the issues of poor infrastructure and logistic support

"These are all challenges that we are addressing so that the structural problems confronting the industrial development of our country can be successfully overcome...and in the process, we are getting some modest results.

"We are improving our standing in terms of ease of doing business in our country. We will also have witnessed a significant reduction in the monetary policy rate of the Bank of Ghana, which has translated into an increasingly declining rate of lending rate.

"Inflation has also come down significantly since we came to power. All of these are efforts that we are making to improve the business environment and make it possible for our enterprises in Ghana to be competitive," the President said.