We'll Find Market For Export - Minister

The Minister of Trade, Ms Hannah Tetteh, has told small-scale entrepreneurs that the Government was ready to engage them in a dialogue to identify the problems militating against the growth of the sector.

The minister said the programmes being designed by Government for small-scale businesses in the private sector led to a development strategy that was expected to boost the growth of small-scale businesses.

The minister, however, expressed concern that the various private sector led development strategies designed to propel the growth of the country’s private sector, had not been fully implemented.

Ms Tetteh said the phase two of the private sector led development strategy was being formulated with inputs from the Ghana Employers Association, the Federation of Ghanaian Exporters, the Association of Ghana Industries, Association of Small Scale Industries and the Private Enterprise Foundation.

That strategy, she said, would focus on finding new market opportunities for Ghanaian produce, adding value to the country’s products and making the country’s exports more competitive on the international market.

The minister said this on the sidelines of a National Consultative Meeting on “Articulating Appropriate Agricultural Trade Policies” at the Institute of Economic Affairs in Accra.

The minister’s statement might be a relief to some citrus farmers who said they found the country’s export rules complex and difficult to comprehend.

This they say deter them from sourcing for ready buyers of their products on the international market.

This concern was expressed by Nana Entsie Okor I, a citrus farmer, in an interview in Accra.

“Our major problem is that, we have not been able to hit the international market with our products and this is a concern to us because we are not getting the ready market for our products”, Nana Entsie said.

The inability of the Ghana Export Promotion Council to organise trade shows and international fairs for industry members was another setback, Nana Okor added.

“Our major problem is that we have not been able to hit the international market with our products and this is a concern to us because we are not getting the ready market for our products”.

He therefore, called for an intensive education to enable them know what exactly the country’s export laws entailed and how they could applied to source for markets internationally.

Author : Suleiman Mustapha