The Managing Director of the State Transport Company (STC), Nana Akomea, has touted that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has performed better in industrialisation than any other government under the Fourth Republic.
According to him, “the NPP, under the leadership of President Nana Akufo-Addo, has so far created about 139,331 jobs under the government’s flagship 1 District 1 Factory (1D1F) industrialisation programme.
“As of July 2020, 76 1D1F factories are in operation, of these, 28 are new factories, while 48 are existing factories that have taken advantage of 1D1F scheme to expand and add on new production units with a total of 232 factories also at various stages of completion.
“Even though we do not have a factory in each district, progress achieved in industrialising Ghana by the President Akufo-Addo-led administration cannot be beaten, in the history of the Fourth Republic,” Nana Akomea asserted.
Addressing a press conference organised by the NPP on Monday in Accra, he disclosed that jobs which comprised 18,811 direct and 120,520 indirect jobs were created as of July 2020.
Nana Akomea explained that the1D1F was a policy strategy which provided for the government partnership with private investors to build carefully selected large scale industries that would serve as growth poles for industrial economy.
He mentioned selected industries including heavy import ones, like rice, sugar, canned tomato, chicken processing, and others, stressing “the push for automotive development is already attracting investment from global brands such as Toyota, Volkswagen and Sinotruck.
“This is the most determined push to achieve an industrial economy for the country, since President Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the citizenry, particularly the youth, must vote for this determined effort to secure for ourselves an industrialised country that produces and sells for exports and local market, chocolate instead of cocoa beans, gold trinkets/ornaments instead of raw metal, aluminum ingots instead of bauxite,” he said.
Nana Akomea added that “cassava and potato chips alongside raw cassava and potato, yam chips alongside yam, processed pepper alongside raw pepper, canned tomatoes alongside raw produce, fragrant rice instead of raw unprocessed rice among others.”
BY BERNARD BENGHAN
