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The Minister-designate of Trade and Industry, Alan John Kyerematen, revealed that a total of 76 factories are currently in operation under Akufo-Addo’s flagship initiative “One District One Factory Initiative” (1D1F ).
According to him, 107 factories are currently under construction out of a total of 232 projects in different stages of implementation since 2017.
Out of 232 factories, Alan Kyerematen said 64 of the projects under the 1D1F initiative were existing companies and 158 of them are new factories.
Alan Kyerematen, who served as minister of trade, industry, private sector development (PSD) and special presidential initiatives (PSI), under the NPP government led by President Kufuor, told the nominations committee on Friday of Parliament.
“Currently we have 232 1D1F projects that are in different stages of implementation and contrary to some of the comments that have been made, 1D1F is an attempt to just rush existing businesses, while the program implementation framework allows 1D1F, but if you look at the statistics on the 232 companies, only 64 are existing companies and 168 are new companies, ”said former Ghanaian ambassador to the United States.
“The breakdown is as follows, projects currently operating under the name 1D1F are 76, projects under construction are 107, and projects ready to start construction in the first half of this year (2021) are 49” , said Alan Kyerematen.
Responding to the breakdown of businesses built by the leader of the minority, Haruna Iddrisu, the designated Minister of Trade and Industry said: “So far, out of the 232 projects, 56% are agro-industrial projects, 22% general manufacturing, 5% meat processing, primary agriculture is 4% and other industrial enterprises which constitute 13% ”.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) led by then-candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in its 2016 manifesto pledged to work with the private sector to build factories in the 216 factories as part of plans to industrialization and transformation of the Ghanaian economy, however, some districts of the country have not yet benefited from the noble initiative of the government.
Commenting on the initiative’s progress, the Minister-designate of Trade and Industry said the government was on track to fulfill its mandate, adding that a total of 49 factory projects are expected to start in the during the first quarter of 2021.
Alan Kyerematen told this committee that under the 1D1F initiative a total of 139,331 direct and indirect jobs have been created by the 76 companies currently in operation.
He added that 285,915 additional direct and indirect jobs are expected to be created through the projects currently under construction.
“Thanks to the intervention of 1D1F, 139,331 direct and indirect jobs were created by the 76 companies already operational 285,915 additional direct and indirect jobs are projected from projects under construction”, Alan Kyerematen justifies the impact of factories built on the Ghanaian economy.
The minister-designate said through the 1D1F initiative the government was able to raise £ 2.3bn from local financial institutes and the government provided interest reduction support of £ 213m to reduce the risks of the project so that the banks become more profitable.
Alan Kyerematen told the Nominations Committee that the government, through Parliament, had granted a total of 603 million as import duty exemptions to 37 1D1F companies.
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