Ghana’s new High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (UK) H.E Victor Smith has stated that his main goal and vision is to help attract investment from the British and Irish companies to Ghana and by so doing help make Ghana a better place than we have it now.
He disclosed this in an exclusive interview with Archibald Hammond of Osibisa Radio, London. The High Commissioner said, during his two years span as the Ghanaian Ambassador to the Czech Republic, he helped organized a forum which was aimed at showcasing and whipping up the investment potentials in Ghana to investors in the Czech Republic.
Mr. Smith said the forum was very successful and its impact is being felt now in Ghana because it generated high interest by Czech companies in Ghana. He said recently, about 50 businessmen and women from that country led by their Foreign Minister visited Ghana looking at how they can collaborate with the local Ghanaian business people in-line with the government’s vision of partnership.
He reiterated, that one important aspect he is keen to also look at in the UK is how to help and encourage Ghanaian professionals who are living and working in the United Kingdom and Ireland to start returning home and team up with some of the businesses that the government is trying to attract into Ghana.
He explained that the drive for more foreign direct investment in Ghana cannot be de-linked from the need to get the adequate human resource required to work in those industries. He noted that, his predecessor began a project to register and build a data of skilled Ghanaian and professionals living and working in the UK and Ireland. According to Mr. Smith, he intends to improve on the data towards the realisation of his vision of getting more Ghanaians especially professionals and skilled to go back home and help build the nation.
H.E. Victor Smith also used the opportunity to call on all Ghanaians living in the UK and Ireland irrespective of their political party affiliations or groupings to support his vision and help move Ghana forward. He said, in due course he will be meeting all Ghanaians in a durbar to lay out his vision.
The new ambassador who used to reside in the UK and returned to Ghana in 1994 to join the State Enterprises Commission as a consultant on the restructuring of State-owned enterprises said it is his intention in the discharge of his duties as the ambassador of Ghana in the UK to treat various political parties and groupings equally as that is what is needed to move the country forward.
