Ghana will do all it’s can to scale up value additions to commodities in the country, this is according to Deputy Energy Minister Incharge of Finance and Infrastructure, Joseph Cudjoe will help the country to rake in more revenue.
Speaking at the ongoing MEDays International forum in Morocco’s city of Tangier on the topic: “World Commodities Market; Bring Back Africa in the Game”, Mr Cudjoe argued that so far as Ghana and other African countries remain at the primary commodity level, jobs, skilled labour and the needed revenue is lost to the international markets.
“Ghana is in the domain of agric business, we produce cocoa, between us and Cote d’ivoire we produce up to 70 percent of the global supply of cocoa and rake in about billion dollars a year but that is just for the primary cocoa beans as exported, Ghana is also in the commodity domain by way of being a gold producer among others metals and in the oil and gas as well but our total GDP for a country that produces 200,000 barrels of crude oil a day, exporting one million ounces of gold and also exports about nine hundred thousand tonnes of cocoa and these are just three of the categories of products we export, believe me GDP for the country as at 2018 data stands at 65 billion dollars and just one company in the US that is Apple, its annual turnover is more than Ghana’s GDP, so it strikes me that something is missing”, he observed
Mr Cudjoe posited that so far as Ghana and other countries remain at the primary commodity level and just produce the raw materials and exports to feed the secondary and the tertiary production, it will be difficult to create jobs and wealth but was quick to add that Ghana currently processes about forty percent of it cocoa as plans are also far advanced to set up a fertiliser processing plant at Jomoro in the Western Region as well as establish a petrochemical hub all in a bid to add value to our oil and gas production.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Ohene Gyan