News:
Member of Parliament for Akim Oda, Alexander Akwesi Acquah
April 5, 2022
The Member of Parliament for Akim Oda, Alexander Akwesi Acquah is optimistic that the time is ripe for Ghana to focus on manufacturing and production. Contributing to debate on the floor on the President’s message of the State of the Nation Address delivered to the House, Mr Akwasi Acquah said the Ghanaian, giving the opportunity and the right environment would create jobs and opportunity for himself and others to reduce the public wage.
This, he noted is why it is important for us as a country to pay particular attention to the government’s flagship programme ‘one district, one factory’ (1d 1f). He said the president’s announcement that 278 1d1f projects are at various stages of completion in all 16 regions, and creating some 150, 975 direct and indirect jobs is welcoming and must be supported to even do more.
He chides his colleagues in the minority for criticizing the initiative because most off the listed companies long existed in this country. The Akim Oda MP argued that it not out of place for government to invest in companies that were doing so well but collapsed somewhere along the line, knowing such factories have the potential to meet the needs of the citizenry and create jobs.
He said the 1d1f initiative is well-thought through to offer various supports to businesses to thrive including providing tax incentives; waiver on duty and levies on imported plants, machineries, recruitment as well as raw materials; interest subsidies for loans granted to 1d1f companies by participating financial institutions; five year corporate tax holidays; technical assistance among others so if existing factories are helped to access these supports it would only go to accelerate our quest for industrialization and manufacturing.
Mr. Akwesi Acquah noted that through the 1d1f programme agro-processing is getting a boost in the country following the establishement of fFive medium-scale state of the art agro processing common user facilities at Dormaa West, Savelugu, Sefwi Akotombra, Sekyere Central, Tarkwa Nsuaem. These are owned by various groups of farmers with direct support from government. “But for these facilities these farmers would have had their produce going bad a recording high post-harvest losses”, he added.
He asserts that it takes a viable economy to attract such giant companies to come and establish companies in the country, and urged his colleagues to see the positive in the automobile companies that have moved to Ghana for business. He said the only reason these giant automobile companies are in Ghana assembling their vehicles is that the Country is ready for manufacturing and production; and from assembling they would upgrade to total production in the country.
Ghanamps.com