By Jones Anlimah
The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has held a day’s capacity-building engagement for small and medium-scale entrepreneurs in the Volta Region on the National Export Development Strategy (NEDS), a 10-year plan by the government to leverage on the potential of non-traditional exports to generate about 25.3 billion US dollars by 2029.
The Volta and Oti Regional Director of the GEPA, Mr Chris Amponsah Sackey, urged owners of small and medium-scale enterprises to use NEDS as a leap to the realisation of African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA), which according to him, will reduce the challenges traders face in trading among African countries.
The African Continental Free Trade Area is a single market trading bloc covering the entire continent with a population of about 1.3 billion and a combined gross domestic product of about 3.4 trillion dollars. The objective is to encourage and boost intra-African trade by progressively removing tariff and non-tariff barriers on the continent.
According to the document of the National Export Development Strategy (NEDS), there is the need to increase contributions of Non Traditional Exports (NTEs) to the country’s GDP with significant increase in per-capita income. It is also the goal of the strategy to achieve substantial increment in manufactured goods and services to meet the NTE’s revenue target of at least 23.5 billion dollars by the 10th year of 2029.
The one-day capacity building programme brought together owners of small and medium-scale enterprises as well as four municipal and district assemblies, including Ho West, Adaklu, and Agotime-Ziope districts, and the Ho Municipal Assembly, all in the Volta Region.
The Acting Volta Regional Coordinating Director, Mr. Augustus Awuty, said the National Export Development Strategy is a response by the government to addressing the challenges confronting the country as a result of the high import regime in the country.
“As you are already aware, Ghana is currently experiencing a lot of challenges with regards to importation of goods and government, in an attempt to change that direction, has developed the National Export Development Strategy. This strategy has one of the key pillars as trying to change our orientation, to change the unbridled import of goods into the country, and for each and every district to identify a product that would be exported so that the dependence on imports will be curtailed,” he added.
The Volta and Oti Regional Director of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority, Mr. Chris Amponsah Sackey, said for the country to realise the full benefits of AFCTA, there is the need to move away from raw material export economy to a value-added export economy. He announced that the Volta Region will host its maiden edition of the GEPA export school from November 28, to December 2, this year and urged stakeholders to patronise the business school which according to him will provide participants with insights on how to take advantage of the AFCTA through NEDS.
“One of the things that the NEDS document also talks about and gives a lot of attention to is ensuring that products that we import into the country find their substitutes over here. And so, moving forward, we are going to be looking more at developing the rice value chain over here in the Volta region because this region is an agrarian region and farmers are predominantly rice farmers. So we want to develop rice in the Volta region so that we will be able to feed ourselves and reduce the importation of rice because we spend so much on rice.”
An exporter and the Managing Director of Syldem Company Limited, Mrs Sylvia Demanya, highlighted some challenges confronting some SME’s and appealed to government to assist them.
“And these challenges are as a result of registering our products in Nigeria. NAVDAC, the regulatory body in Nigeria, charges about 12,000 Dollars and more in order to acquire certificate before one can display his or her product on shelves in shops in Nigeria. But since most of us are SMEs and are now growing we don’t have that amount of money to facilitate that and so, as a result of that, we are not able to facilitate the export business smoothly as we may have wanted it,” she noted
Each of the participating District Assemblies at the workshop identified one exportable product for which government through GEPA and its relevant agencies, will prioritise and help put on the international market.