In line with the MoU, which was signed in Accra on Wednesday, the government’s One-district, One-factory policy and 11 other sectors will receive attention.

Ghana’s part of the deal was signed by the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, while that of the USA was initialed by the visiting US Secretary of Commerce, Mr Wilbur Ross.

Present at the signing was President Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Briefing

Briefing the media at the Jubilee House after the signing ceremony, a Deputy Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, likened the deal to the one that Dr Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana into which culminated in the building of the Akosombo Dam and the VALCO Factory for the smelting of alumina about 60 years ago.

He, however, did not provide details of the MoU, except to add that the US government would partner American businesses to work with their Ghanaian counterparts to advance the industrialisation agenda of the Ghanaian government.

He described the MoU as a “big deal”.

Delegation

Mr Oppong Nkrumah said Mr Ross was in Ghana with a 60-man delegation of American businessmen and Federal officers to engage with captains of industry and businesses on a number of joint investment opportunities.

He said the MOU outlined the opportunities and committed both sides to jointly invest in public-public, public-private and private-private ventures.

He said they included infrastructure, agriculture, industry, railway and energy and explained that just as Exxon Mobil had taken part in Ghana’s oil, he hoped that more American companies would participate in the upstream petroleum sector.

Mr Oppong Nkrumah explained that for Ghana, the rationale behind the collaborative effort was to speed up the rate of growth, leading to wealth creation, more job creation and eventually the transformation of the Ghanaian society.

He made it clear that there was no monetary commitment to the deal for now. However, in the three countries that the US delegation was visiting, it planned to invest about $I billion.

He expressed the hope that in the direct discussions between the Ghanaian business community and agencies and their American counterparts, the specific outlines would be made known.