The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Dr Afua Asabea Asare, says successful needs assessments of over 1,000 SMEs have been carried out in 112 districts in the country.
The aim, she said, is to enhance their technical and human
resource capacity so that they could become exporters in the short to medium
term.
Dr Asabea Asare said this at the 64th Annual General Meeting
of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) on the theme: Navigating the
Uncertainties of Our Business Landscape to Sustain Productivity.”
Delivering the keynote address, she said the initiative had
been implemented under the ‘One District, One Exportable Product Strategy under
the National Export Development Strategy with plans in place to upscale the
activity in 2025 and beyond.
She said the interventions had been achieved across the
country due to the partnership with key agencies, including the Ghana Standards
Authority, Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Enterprises Agency, and AGI.
The CEO said as part of building the expertise and
resilience of local businesses to scale up their operations and meet
international standards, GEPA had initiated partnerships to help promote
compliance with international standards, enhance exporters’ competitiveness and
ensure sustainable practices across the value chain.
“Recognising the significant role that SMEs play in exports,
we have implemented the SME Banking Forum, where the banks engage SMEs to
provide tailor-made financial packages to the SMEs to expand their reach and
build resilience,” she said.
Some of the organisations involved in the collaborations
with GEPA are the International Trade Centre, the National Trade Centre in
Geneva, and local institutions.
The primary goal of the National Export Development Strategy
is to ensure that non-traditional export revenues increase exponentially from
$2.85 billion in the year 2020 to $25.3 billion by the end of 2029.
The strategy outweighs several key interventions, programmes
and activities to be implemented annually and one key part of it is to build
and expand the required human capital for industrial export development and
marketing.
The strategy is underpinned by three pillars – improvement
of the business regulatory environment, improvement of the supply capacity of
key products and services and strengthening of the human resources to enable
improved performance of the export sector.
Dr Asabea Asare said since the implementation of the
strategy in 2021, the export sector stakeholder institutions and the private
sector have seen a growth share in non-traditional export revenues, from $2.85
billion in 2020 to almost $4 billion in 2023.
Dr Humphrey Ayim Darke, President of AGI, said the industry
witnessed some recovery and had experienced relative stability in the early
part of this year but it was not without intermittent power outages.
He said whilst the VAT waiver on locally produced textiles
remained in force, the waiver of VAT on locally manufactured sanitary pads also
took effect this year to make the sector competitive.
He said, “Today, our local manufacturers enjoy the dual
benefit of the Upfront Relief of VAT and at the same time the in-bond
manufacturing dispensation that grants a duty deferment on imported raw
materials.”
Source: GNA