Govt to procure products from local industries

The government will from the next procurement cycle support local industries by ensuring that all government institutions buy toilet rolls from local industries.

This will help sustain the government’s One District One Factory (1D1F) plan and more importantly provide jobs.

Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia who made this known after a visit to Brompton Portfolios Group Limited, producers of toilet rolls at the Nsawam Prisons, said the directive was as a result of the successes chalked up so far from 1D1F initiative.

Factory visit

Dr Bawumia was accompanied on the visit by the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Mr Henry Quartey, and a Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Robert Ahomka Lindsay.

He said the country was largely dependent on imports which tended to make the import bill very high.

However, the vision of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo under the 1D1F, the Vice-President explained, was for the country to move away from the import of primary commodities to the manufacturing of such commodities as one of the pillars for the government’s industrialisation agenda.

The factory

Brompton Portfolios Group Limited, sited in the Nsawam Prisons, is a toilet roll manufacturing factory.

Though privately owned, the factory is jointly operated with the Ghana Prisons Service and was inaugurated under the government’s 1D1F in May this year.

It produces 2,500 packs of the Softex brand of toilet roll a day.

It also employs some of the prisoners as workers and operates a shift system with 13 prisoners, mostly men, on each shift.

Creating jobs

Dr Bawumia said once the country was able to manufacture to meet its demand, “we would be able to save on scarce foreign exchange, grow local industries and create jobs.”

“The import bill for toilet roll last year was $70 million and so the point that we are making is that given the success of the 1D1F, the government is going to use the power of its procurement to support local industries,” the veep said while indicating that there were nine toilet roll companies when the government came into office, but it had been able to add five more factories through the 1D1F within the last two and half years, thereby increasing the country’s capacity to produce toilet roll to about five percent.

That, he said, called for support for the local industry so that the country would be satisfied with having sufficient capacity to meet a large amount of the demand for products such as toilet roll.

“We are also saying the capacity of the 14 toilet roll manufacturing companies we have in Ghana is able to meet most of the demand, so from the next procurement cycle all government institutions, whether military, police or hospitals, must buy toilet rolls from local manufacturing companies,” Vice-President Bawumia added and said “we will create jobs, save foreign exchange and grow the economy.”

He described the initiative as a real-life advantage and commended the Ghana Prisons Service and Brompton Portfolios Group Limited for the introduction of a unique and socially responsive model which used labour from the prison and provided many social interventions.

Support

The Managing Director of Brompton Portfolios Group Limited, Mr James Topp Yankah, said the young but vibrant company had received support from the government and the GCB Bank and expressed appreciation to them for the assistance.

He said the company had so far produced over 70,000 packs of toilet rolls while it had made efforts to use the waste products to manufacture egg crates and other biodegradable products.

On the company’s plan to widen its scope, Mr Yankah said although the market had been competitive so far, the company intended to sell to senior high schools and other institutions by offering credit systems among other innovative strategies to stay in the competition.