We have comprehensive interventions to cut importation of sugar - Trade Minister-Designate

The Minister-Designate for Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen has stated that his ministry has a progressive comprehensive intervention in place to cut the importation of three major products such as sugar, rice and poultry in the country.

Alan stated that the country spends close to $1 billion on the importation of these products to the country.

“We are almost close to one billion dollars on imports averagely for no reason because we have the local capacity to be able to do import substitution to produce these commodities, but this underpins the decision of the president for Ghana to launch a comprehensive programme for industrial transformation which my ministry has been leading and basically this transformation programme is anchored on two parallel tracks. First is to ensure that we produce to export and secondly also that we produce for the purposes of import substitution and so we have a very comprehensive intervention that we have put in place,” he said.

He further stated that “the comprehensive transformational interventions include building the capacity of local businesses to be able to import substitute and also produce these products for exports and we are already on the right track and that’s the basis for our industrial transformation agenda.”

Responding to a question asked on how many 1 District 1Factor (1D1F) was initiated under his first term, Mr Kyerematen said: “the 1D1F is a revolutionary invention to have been introduced in the country.”