Mr Goosie Tanoh, the Presidential Advisor for 24-Hour Economy, has explained that the Government’s Accelerated Export Development Programme (AEDP) is built around three fundamental pillars: Production Transformation, Market Systems Efficiency and Human Capital Development.
He made the disclosure during the inauguration of the 19-Member Accelerated Export Development Advisory Committee, which is under the Chairmanship of President John Dramani Mahama, at Presidency in Accra.
Mr Tanoh said through Production Transformation, they could move Ghana away from its dependence on raw commodity exports and towards exports of value-added products.
“Through Supply Chain and Market Efficiency, we will reduce logistics costs to our producers, strengthen trade facilitation and radically reduce post-harvest losses,” he stated.
“And through labour power development, we will build a digitally fluent, technically skilled, culturally formidable and globally competitive workforce.”
The inauguration of the Committee marks the fulfilment of President Mahama’s campaign promise to Ghanaians in 2024, to personally work with industry leaders to remove the bottlenecks and disincentives to rapid expansion of Ghana’s export sector, making Made-in-Ghana goods available and loved across the African Continent and in the International Market Place.
This move comes alongside his 24-Hour Economy plan, aimed at boosting economic growth and creating job opportunities for the country.
Mr Tanoh said the government would only claw their way out of the economic crisis they sustainably inherited by helping the nation’s producers to expand and diversify production and export especially within the West African sub-region and the continent.
He noted that despite decades of heroic effort, the nation’s non-traditional exporters earned only $3.5 billion annually.
This figure, he said, was underwhelming for an economy of the nation’s potential. He said most of the nation’s export earnings still come from cocoa beans, gold and crude oil commodities, to which they add little value.
“This is the principal reason that we appear to be permanently in crisis. The only way out is to expand our self-reliance and our export industries,” Mr Tanoh stated, adding “we must assist our industries to expand and diversify our exports competitively.”
Mr Tanoh said the President’s 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development programme was Ghana’s strategy for structural transformation to be rolled out in tandem with prudent macro-economic management and radically improved governance.
He said the programme envisions a resilient, self-reliant, and globally competitive economy that optimises asset utilisation and creates value for all its citizens, especially the most vulnerable.
Touching on the challenges they must confront head-on, Mr Tanoh said the barriers were well known and that they were not insurmountable.
He said there was a maze of regulatory hurdles with exporters facing up to 16 regulatory steps just to obtain necessary pre-export documentation; adding that navigating their ports involves long delays, informal payments, and high costs.
Mr Tanoh said a deficit in accredited laboratories means that international standard compliance documentation was always a struggle.
“No wonder so few Ghanaian firms want to venture into exports,” he said.
Concerning Ghana’s Strategic Opportunity in Regional and Global Markets, Mr Tanoh said Ghana, being a home to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, was not just attributes but a strategic lever to boost Ghana’s export.
He said: “With clear investment in a diversified production base, scrupulous adherence to quality, efficient logistics, and a well-calibrated market strategy for our goods, Ghana can become a central production and export hub in West Africa.”
He said President Mahama’s establishment of the Committee, which was composed of some of the most accomplished champions of Ghanaian industry signals that transformation would not be driven by bureaucracy, but by partnership with people who build, create, innovate and deliver.
GNA
