Dumsor cost Ghana $3bn – Prez. Akufo-Addo reveals

• Posted on August 15, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The president, Nana Akufo-Addo is promising an exciting menu of new business opportunities meant to transform the private sector.

For a sector that has suffered a decline over the last few years, the president said a programme of rapid industrialization and agro-processing will be government’s agenda for job creation.

He was speaking at the second edition of the national policy summit on trade and industry opened at the Accra International Conference Centre, Monday.

The policy summit was to outline government’s policy on trade and industry and to collate views from other stakeholders on how best government can fashion out policies to create more jobs for the growing unemployed youth.

The president was under no illusions at all about the challenges his government will be confronted with in a bid to transform the sector.

“The industrial sector suffered a setback over the last few years,” he said.

According to him, in 2008 under the administration of the ex-president John Kufuor the sector peaked to 15% only to slump to 4.8% in 2015. It got worse in 2015 sliding into negative figures, he chronicled.

“The manufacturing sector also recorded negative growth with a significant number of small scale industries brought to their knees,” he intimated.

The president noted the four years of power paralysis under the previous even worsened what was a rather precarious situation in the industrial sector.

Quoting the Institute of Statistical and Industrial Research (ISSER) the president said the effect of the power crisis on the economy in 2015 alone was $618 million. By extension, he said a total of $3 billion was lost in four years to the poor management of the power crisis.

“Thousands of Ghanaians lost their jobs,” he said.

The bleak background notwithstanding, president Nana Akufo-Addo said the government is putting in place a new strategy to comprehensively address the challenges in the industrial sector in order to make businesses thrive and create more jobs.

He outlined a ten point strategy hinged on industrial transformation.

Among the strategies include a one district, one factory programme which is expected to kick start in the next couple of weeks.

According to the president there will be industrial parks established in each of the ten regions of Ghana in what he described as “one region one industrial park.”

There will also be the plan to build on the competitiveness of the existing local industries, improve upon their finances and make it more lucrative, he said.

-Myjoyonline