The government, he said, attached equal importance to the establishment of new companies in a bid to empower the private sector to champion the transformational agenda.

Dr Bawumia said this when he paid an unannounced visit to the Tema Free Zone Enclave last Tuesday.

Value addition

He said the government was particularly interested in encouraging value addition to local raw materials, which would provide more product lines and thereby create jobs and grow the economy.

During a tour of two cocoa processing companies, Barry Callebaut and Niche Cocoa Industries Limited, the Vice-President explained that he was there to understand the challenges they faced in order to address the bottlenecks hampering the operations of companies in the Free Zone enclave.

He was excited to see that the companies were almost entirely run by Ghanaians or had a significant Ghanaian representation.

Industrial challenges

“I am happy to see Ghanaian men and women doing earnest jobs to earn a living. But we want to see more value addition. There are so many jobs we can create with value addition,” he said.

“I also came here to get a better understanding of the sort of challenges you have because we are not satisfied with the level of processing of cocoa, for example, in Ghana,” he added.

Dr Bawumia said the government was pushing for the country to process and add value to its raw materials and not just export them, saying: “We want to see much greater volumes being processed, which means more exports and more jobs.”

Current challenges

Taking the Vice-President round the factory, Mrs Charity A. Sackitey, the Managing Director of Barry Callebaut, appealed for a discount from the Ghana Cocoa Board for the main cocoa crop season, arguing that such a discount would help the company almost double production and create more jobs.

The company, she explained, only received a discount for the light crop season and that had limited its ability to expand as much as it could.

The Managing Director of Niche Cocoa Industry Limited, Mr Edmund Poku, appealed for more financial support for companies in the cocoa processing industry to help them buy more beans for processing and expansion.

The Vice-President promised to engage the appropriate stakeholders to consider their concerns for a speedy resolution.