The Deputy Secretary of Commerce of the United States Department of Commerce, Don Graves, has pledged the United States of America’s support to Ghana to help grow businesses, particularly Micro, Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (MSMEs), a move that he describes will boost Ghana’s economic transformation.
Speaking at
the 2022 US-Ghana Business Forum organised by the American Chamber of Commerce
Ghana, the Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce, Don
Graves said the USA will continue to strengthen commercial connections with
Ghana in order to help both countries thrive.
This he
believes will transform many smaller and medium-sized Ghanaian businesses into
giant ones.
“We have to
continue working to accomplish our mission and improve on trade activities. It
should be easy for me to move to the Ghanaian authorities to discuss issues and
vice versa”, he said.
“We will do everything possible to also encourage US
businesses to consider the Ghanaian market to establish subsidiaries or better
still partnerships with some Ghanaian investors to help create jobs for the
many unemployed youth as well as grow the country’s Gross Domestic Product. The
USA is a strong partner of Ghana and will remain an ally”, he stressed.
Speaking
at the same forum, a Senior Director at P and G Africa, Temitope Iluyemi, said
the potency of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will be
questioned if proper plans are not put in place to integrate the activities of
trade.
According
to her, the secretariat should look beyond presenting trade opportunities to
fully-fledged companies and help in providing frameworks to small businesses to
scale up.
She
said MSMEs should forge partnerships for learning and knowledge networking with
existing platforms on the AfCFTA.
This
engagement and communications strategy, she believes, would be
multi-stakeholder in nature and employ appropriate ways and means of working.
“It
is important to see the AfCFTA not just an advantage for big companies, but
actually to help scale up the operations of our MSMEs and enable the spread of
prosperity across Africa”, she said,
“So when we
stress on it, we need to look at the broad picture and livelihoods across
Africa”, she added.
This year’s
event was under the theme “Leveraging the AfCFTA to Promote U.S Africa Commercial
Partnerships”.
In attendance were government officials from both Ghana and
the USA, executives of AfCFTA, private sector players and regulatory
authorities. Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta and the Minister of
Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful were key speakers at the
event.
Source:myjoyonline