By Iddi Yire
Accra, May 28, GNA – President John Dramani Mahama has reiterated the Government’s commitment to ensure that 50 per cent of Ghana’s cocoa beans are processed locally to increase their value and profitability for the export market.
He said from a low of about 25 per cent processed cocoa, Ghana had risen to about 40 per cent.
“And I know Cote d’Ivoire is ahead of us. Cote d’Ivoire has done 50 per cent, which is comfortable,” President Mahama said during a panel discussion at the 60th Annual General Meeting of the Africa Development Bank Group in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
“And so, 50 per cent of Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa is processed domestically. Ghana is at 40 per cent. We hope that over the next four or five years, we’ll reach the stage of Cote d’Ivoire at 50 per cent and push even further.”
On multilaterism, President Mahama said after the Second World War, nations agreed that a multilateral rules-based trading system was a better way to go and as a result, a lot of work was done by the World Trade Organization, together with all countries, to set up the rules for trade amongst themselves.
He said unfortunately that system had been upended, and countries had decided to impose tariffs based on their own interests.
He said they had transitioned into a transactional world, which sent a signal to Africa that they needed to pull themselves out of their bootstraps, because there was not going to be a free dinner anyway, which means that they must, mobilize more revenue locally.
He said with the assistance of the African Development Bank, they were doing quite fine, but domestically, they must mobilize revenue locally.
“We must add value to our products, and we must get a better share for the natural resource endowment that God has given us,” he said.
“And so, I believe that is a signal to all of us to look inward and see how we can trade more amongst ourselves.”
President Mahama said happily, they had the protocol on the African Continental free Trade Area (AFCFTA), which many African nations had ratified and had the opportunity to to trade amongst themselves.
He said, he was happy that the African Development Bank and other partners had focused on investing in the trade infrastructure amongst themselves.
“It’s not enough to just have a protocol on continental free trade,” President Mahama said.
“If you don’t have the railways, you don’t have the highways, you don’t have the aviation connections to be able to exchange goods amongst yourselves, it amounts to naught.”
President Mahama said that was why the investments in railways, in ports, in highways and others were very timely, which they must take advantage of.
He said in Ghana, they had expanded their port, which became a hub for receiving some of the biggest ships into their port because they had a deep draft of almost 16 metres and once they received containers bound for any country from Namibia, Angola, Cameroon, all the way to Dakar, they could redistribute to other ports.
He said Ghana was positioning herself to trade more with its colleague African countries. “That’s why sometimes you notice that the world economic order is rigged against Africa. We can increase processing overnight, but you have non-tariff barriers in exporting into some of the markets,” he said
“Unless they bring a processor from outside, from Europe, who comes and sets up a processing plant and gets all the regulatory things in place.
“I mean, an indigenous person setting up a processing plant sometimes has a very big difficulty exporting finished products into the EU markets and into the American markets. But I must say that we’ve made progress.”
GNA
Edited by George-Ramsey Benamba