The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) says it would use this year’s edition of the Ghana Club (GC) 100 Awards as a launch pad for promoting partnerships between Ghanaian manufacturers and their foreign counterparts.
The investment promotion agency is poised to use the event to showcase Ghana’s industrialization potential and ensure a marked impact on employment creation and skills development. “As we meet businesses and investors we continue to make it clear that our preference at GIPC is to partner in manufacturing, to the extent that firms in that sector are excluded from capital commitments provided in the law for other investors,” the Chief Executive Officer of the Centre, Mr. Reginald Yofi Grant said.
Responding to concerns from the media at the launch of this year’s awards last Thursday, over the fact that manufacturing firms in Ghana could hardly make it to the top of the GC 100 awards Mr Grant said the Ghanaian economy had been predicated more on services than manufacturing. This year’s event is on the theme, ‘Industrialisation: A Tool for Job Creation and Accelerated Economic Development”.
According to the GIPC, the theme is in line with government’s vision to use manufacturing through the one district, one factory initiative as an economic development and job creation tool. “We have never, as a nation, made manufacturing the key direction of the economy so it’s automatic that we hardly find manufacturing companies at the top,” he noted. Mr. Grant reckoned the challenges faced by manufacturing firms in the country, pointing out “there are a lot of inputs that go into manufacturing unlike the services industry where players import to sell or provide services.”
Government, he indicated remained committed to transforming the economy from a factor-driven raw material exporting economy to one of value addition and processing. “We believe that all the incentives and policies will be directed at manufacturing,” Mr Grant stressed.
The GIPC boss revealed plans by his outfit to encourage small and medium sized enterprises by recognising them on a separate platform “because many of such enterprises do not fit into the parameters we have for the big businesses”. According to him, government’s intention is to help grow SMEs into large companies, adding “we want them not to remain SMEs, they must to be active players in the economy so they contribute to economic growth and transformation”.
SMEs must be seen to be thriving, growing and developing as we redirect the economy and make Ghana the best place to do business, Mr. Grant pointed out.
Source: www.thefinderonline.com