Establish industries authority to reset manufacturing sector - Chamber of Agribusiness to Govt

The Chamber of Agribusiness Ghana (CAG) has called for the establishment of a National Industries Development and Regulatory Authority (NIDRA) as a structural reform to reset the country’s industrial sector.

It explained that such a body had become paramount to prevent a repeat of policy failures associated with the manufacturing ecosystem, particularly with the One District, One Factory (1D1F) programme.

“Factories alone are insufficient for industrial transformation. Competitiveness is built on affordable capital, secure inputs, streamlined regulation, a skilled workforce, and patient, evidence-based policy. The 1D1F experience demonstrates the high cost of neglecting these fundamentals,” it said in a statement dated January 12, 2026. 

1D1F failures

The Chamber said its comprehensive review of the 1D1F initiative showed that despite its ambitious objectives, the programme entrenched high-cost production, debt distress and widespread factory underutilisation rather than delivering sustainable industrial transformation.

The CAG explained that the core weakness of the programme was not merely implementation challenges but a fundamental misalignment between industrial policy and industrial economics.

It argued that factories were financed at effective interest rates ranging between 22 and 47 per cent. 

The Chamber described the rates as incompatible with manufacturing and agro-processing, as such sensitive sectors typically required long gestation periods and patient capital.

“Industrialisation cannot succeed when capital is priced like speculation,” the Chamber lamented, adding that in successful industrialising countries such as China, Vietnam and India, manufacturing finance was typically provided at single-digit rates with long grace periods. 

Financing, fiscal incentives

The Chamber also criticised the performance of development finance institutions, stating that they failed to play a corrective role by pricing loans as high-risk commercial ventures, offering short moratoriums misaligned with production cycles and shifting foreign exchange risks entirely onto firms.

This, it said, turned development finance into an extractive rather than supportive mechanism.

Beyond financing, CAG identified weakened fiscal incentives, the absence of a comprehensive local content policy, inadequate raw material systems and weak skills development frameworks as structural constraints that undermined factory viability.

It cited cases where factories were commissioned without secured feedstock, resulting in erratic production and low capacity utilisation.

Ekumfi case, recommendation

It drew on Ekumfi Juice Factory, which reportedly required about 7,000 acres of cropping support but received only 400 acres, to buttress its points.

The Chamber estimated that policy-induced constraints at the facility led to more than $160 million in annual lost production potential and between 3,000 and 5,000 foregone jobs.

To address such challenges, CAG said the NIDRA should be a statutory body with the mandate to coordinate industrial policy across financing, raw materials, skills development, regulation and market access.

The proposed Authority would also enforce proper economic sequencing by ensuring feasibility assessments and value-chain arrangements are completed before factory commissioning.

The CAG stressed that the Authority should not add another layer of bureaucracy but rather consolidate and rationalise existing industrial mandates scattered across ministries and agencies.

It proposed a single-window regulatory system to reduce transaction costs and improve the ease of doing business.

Significance

The Agribusiness Chamber argued that the reform was urgent as the nation confronted mounting pressures, including a manufacturing sector contributing about 12 per cent to GDP, youth unemployment exceeding 25 per cent and rising import dependency.

With the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offering both opportunity and competition, the Chamber warned that without competitive manufacturing, the country risked becoming a permanent consumer market.

“Establishing the NIDRA is not mere administrative reform but an urgent economic and strategic imperative to redirect Ghana from a path of de-industrialisation towards one of genuine, sustainable industrial transformation,” the CAG said.