79 Projects Under 1D1F Ready To Be Implemented – Veep

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on Thursday announced that 79 projects under the One-District, One Factory (1D1F) Initiative, which are at different stages of implementation, would be rolled out by the end of this year.

He said additional 35 projects were undergoing credit appraisal to ensure they received financial support for smooth take-off.

Vice President Bawumia announced this at the opening of the Second Stakeholders’ Conference on Economic Diplomacy, in Accra.

The Vice President said the Nana Akufo-Addo’s government overriding strategic objective was for a “Ghana beyond Aid” and that the nation could not attain that objective with wishful thinking, but with strong policies on the ground to realise it.

He said the Government had created a conducive macro-economic environment for potential investors to leverage on for smooth take-off, in order to propel the country’s industrialization agenda.

The three-day event on the theme: ” Leveraging Economic Diplomacy for Ghana’s Industrialisation Agenda”, attracted Ghana’s Diplomatic Missions, the Diplomatic Community, Ministers of State, policy-makers and captains of industries.

The conference, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), provided the platform for stakeholders to share information, deepen understanding on government policies and proffer workable solutions to the country’s economic challenges aimed at achieving the industrialisation agenda.

The dialogue would focus on the strategies for the promotion of made-in-Ghana goods and services, the 10-point strategies on industrialization developed by the Ministry of Trade and Industry as well as to strategise on how Ghana could position herself to benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement and attract Direct Foreign Investments.

Vice President Bawumia said there was an urgent need to focus on attracting trade and investments into the national economy, saying that government had launched the Planting for Food and Jobs and operationalised the Ghana Commodity Exchange to promote private sector investment in industry and agriculture sectors, which would contribute to the transformation of the economy.

To attract the desired investments into the economy, he said, it was prudent to create macro-economic stability and a suitable business environment that would make the nation competitive on the global market.

In that regard, he said, upon assumption of office, the Government, through prudent economic policies, stabilised the macroeconomy, increased economic growth from 3.7 per cent in 2016 to 8.5 at the end of 2017, agriculture growth moved upwards from three per cent to 8.4 in 2017, industry growth went up from a negative five per cent to 16.7 per cent.