ACCRA, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ghana's Minister for Trade and Industry Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen Tuesday tasked industries and business entities in the country to improve their product quality and take advantage of the large Chinese market.
Kyerematen said this at the opening of a two-day Ghana Industrial Summit and Exhibition 2019 under the theme "Strengthening Ghana Industries for Global Competiveness in Accra".
He said the current Ghanaian government had created the enabling environment for industries and other business organizations to do well competitively globally, if they improved product quality and packaging.
He said China's population and her market offered businesses and industries in Ghana the chance to take full advantage and grow their frontiers internationally.
"Access to market ought not to be a problem for now. For now, this is outside all the bilateral agreements that we have signed with different countries. China alone can be a market destination for all our products if you interrogate what it takes that we can export to China," he said.
He said government had worked hard to reduce inflation from 15.4 percent to 9.4 percent in 2018, debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 73 percent in 2016 to 60 percent in 2018, while budget deficit declined from 9 percent to 3.8 percent in 2018 and policy rate from 25.5 percent to 23 percent as of last year, adding that this made the business environment conducive for growth.
Kyeremanten said government was focusing on regulatory restructuring to help businesses grow, but tasked industries and commercial entities to work on absolute managing inefficiencies that made their work noncompetitive.
In an interview with Xinhua, Yaw Adu Gyamfi, the president of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), said Ghanaian industries should work assiduously to do business with China whose population was over 2.3 billion.
"Talking about the China market, you are talking of about 2.3 billion. We need to know what the Chinese people need from us, other than raw materials; instead of taking our raw materials, we need to process it before exporting," he said.
He said China's market was large, adding that, if well targeted, Ghanaian businesses could grow in values and profit margins.
He said government should further reduce taxes on import duties and other taxable inputs of production to make it cost relatively cheaper for competitive advantage.
The summit and exhibition has brought players from energy, agriculture, trade, industry, oil and gas, among others.
