Govt commences industrial revitalisation programme

Government has initiated an industrial revitalisation programme to assist manufacturing companies that suffered shocks during the five-year power cut challenges to resuscitate their operations, a Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Carlos Kingsley Ahenkorah, has said.

According to him, the government will provide an incentive for them to assist in their revival so they can re-engage workers who were sent home during the crisis.

“The government wants to help companies that have suffered shocks as a result of the power crisis which severely affected the country’s productive sector leading to scores of people being made redundant,” Mr Ahenkorah said.

The deputy trade and industry minister made this known when he paid a working visit to the fruits and vegetables processing company, Eden Tree Limited, on the Spintex Road in the Tema metropolis.

The visit was to provide the minister with an opportunity to keep abreast of the operations of the company.

The company’s new factory with the capacity to process and package 10 tonnes of fruits and vegetables daily will enable it to enhance its business of distributing fruits and vegetables to major retail trading centres, including the Accra Mall, Marina, Junction and Westhills malls. 

The company also has some 80 out-grower farmers which it supports with soft loans at no interest rate to produce fruits and vegetables for its distribution network.

Strategic plan

Mr Ahenkorah indicated that the ministry, as parts of its 10-point strategic plan, had initiated an industrial sub-contracting exchange programme to profile large industries to determine what they would require to scale up their operations. 

Similarly, small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), he said, would also be assisted to increase their production capacity which would help them trade across borders.

“When local industries are empowered to have the needed capacity, government agencies will be prompted to source their inputs right here in Ghana which will help to improve domestic trade,” Mr Ahenkorah suggested.

Local goods in malls

Answering questions on concerns by local producers that their produce had no visibility in multinational shopping malls operating in the country, Mr Ahenkorah hinted that the ministry would put together a policy that would ensure that 20 per cent of the stock in such malls were local goods.

He, however, expressed worry about the poor packaging of locally-manufactured products which he said remained a major bottleneck in achieving that vision.

Eden Tree

The company has adopted international safety practices in its operations by dividing its processing and packaging floors into zones. It also has some of the facilities secluded and limited to only authorised persons.

The Co-Founder, Mr Alfred Benson, said the company was presently processing at about 24 per cent capacity owing to the lack of raw materials. That, he said, informed their decision to support out-growers to shore up production.

He expressed the hope that the initiative would also help reduce waste of farm produce.