Chinese company to establish industrial park in Ghana

A Chinese manufacturing company, Xinjiang Tianye (Group) Co. Ltd, is in the country to hold discussions with some government agencies to establish an industrial park that will focus on tomato processing.

Tianye, a drip irrigation provider, is seeking a 20,000-hectare land to build the park.

Estimated to cost $50 million, the park is expected to house a tomato farm, a processing factory and offices.

Establishments visited

A two-member team from the Chinese Business Community, comprising Mr Hai Yang Zhang and the representative of the Tianye Group, Mr Bao Zhang Liu, have already met with the Minister of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, officials of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), the Northern Development Authority (NDA), formerly the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), and the Ghana Irrigation Development Agency (GIDA) station at the Dawhenya Irrigation Project site to assess the suitability of the soil for tomato production.

The group, which is also in the country on behalf of the Chinese business community, has also visited the Kpong Dam area where the MoFA is developing a 2,000-hectare irrigation project under the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project.

The group has also left for the northern part of the country where they will be expected to visit various agricultural establishments and farms.

Above expectations

Briefing the Daily Graphic after the visit to the Kpong Dam, the African Business Manager of Xinjiang Tianye, Mr Zhang, said they were overwhelmed by the opportunities they had been exposed to.

“To be frank with you, what we have seen so far has exceeded our expectations,” he told the Daily Graphic and expressed the hope that by the time they ended the visit to the country, a lot of decisions would have been made.

Mr Zhang, who is also the representative of the Chinese investor community, said the company was eager to begin the processes of establishing the park so that it could take off by 2019.

He stated that the Chinese investors were not only interested in tomato production, and that others would venture into the production and processing of cotton, explaining that their trip to northern Ghana would be focused primarily on the cotton industry and other crops that the soil texture there would support.

Background

The decision to establish the park follows an earlier visit by Dr Akoto to China to woo investors to Ghana’s agricultural sector.