The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has reiterated the government’s commitment to empowering indigenous industries in order to get them ready for the emergence of what he called, a new global architecture.
Speaking at the 25th anniversary of the establishment of Tropical Cable and Conductor Limited in Tema on Wednesday (22 June), Bawumia said the ongoing global economic crisis will bring about a new phenomenon, where countries would no longer have to depend much on external products and services, but depend on their local industries.
He therefore, called for a rethink, and the offering of more support to local Ghanaian industries, to empower them and become as successful as Tropical Cables in order to be internationally competitive.
“The on-going global economic crisis, which is the result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, will bring about a new global architecture, where countries will have to be more dependent on themselves,” Dr Bawumia said.
“If we are going to succeed in this new global architecture we have to support our local industries to succeed and that is what other countries are going to do.
“So, there has to be a rethinking of the policy environment; what can we do to empower our local industries. We don’t know when this war between Russia and Ukraine will end but it will end, even if it is five years, it will end.
“But we have to be prepared for the new emerging global architecture and we can only be prepared for it if we are empowering our local industries to produce and to compete globally,” he said.
Government’s industrialisation vision
“Industrialisation has been a strategic priority of the President Akufo-Addo government. The one district-one factory (1D1F) initiative has been transformed from a political mantra into an effective flagship programme geared towards revamping of the economy to create job opportunities for our teeming graduate youth,” Bawumia said.
“At the heart of the 1D1F concept lies government’s firm determination to transform the Ghanaian economy from one known as a supplier of raw materials to the international market, supplying foreign industries with our natural resources to the detriment of our locally-based ones, to one that feeds local value enhancing entities in the country.
“This is why our government in 2019 launched the Ghana Beyond Aid programme, with the overriding objective of adding value to our raw materials at source.”