Mrs. Leticia Osafo-Addo, AGI Vice President
in- Charge of Small Scale Industries, on Thursday stressed the need for
the encouragement of large scale farming to ensure sustainable supply of
raw materials for industrial growth and development.
Delivering a lecture on; "Processing of Raw Materials: Challenges for Ghana," to mark the 19th anniversary celebration of the Africa Industrialisation Day, Mrs Osafo-Addo said lack of continuous supply of suitable raw materials was a major difficulty of manufacturers in the agro-processing sector.
She said, if planting materials, irrigation and other inputs services were provided, it would ensure continuous supply of raw materials for processing.
However, Mrs. Osafo-Addo said the agriculture sector was underperforming and undeveloped because of lack of political commitment, poor infrastructure, reluctance of financial institution to take risk and the absence of entrepreneurial skills to undertake the processing of raw materials.
In this connection, government must foster the enabling competitive and rewarding business environment and ensure the radical dismantle of bureaucratic restrictions and impediment of operating business effectively and profitably in the country.
"A better-organised agricultural sector stands to benefit from the changes that are going on in the economy. The constraints that they face can be removed by the introduction of appropriate policies," she said.
As a first step, she said government must shift focus on commerce and place emphasis on agricultural development and improvement in industrial output.
The Deputy Minister for Trade, Industry, Private Sector Development, and Presidential Initiatives Mrs Gifty Ohene-Konadu emphasised the need for value-addition, saying that, though Africa was endowed with raw materials such as gold, bauxite, diamond among others, they had in most cases been exported without adding value.
She said Ghana was bent on reversing this trend through the establishment of an integrated bauxite and aluminium industry.
Government, she said, was committed to concluding the formulation of an industrial policy framework that will focus on firm level competence, productivity and international competitiveness.
Mr Daouda Toure, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said a project to enhance the export performance of Ghana by creating conditions for strengthening supply capacity in selected agriculture and industry branches, was currently being implemented.
It will also establish a credible conformity assessment infrastructure and foresting integration into the multilateral trading system and strengthen local consumer protection.