The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has taken its sensitisation drive to boost the implantation of the National Export Development Strategy Plan (NEDS) to Sunyani in the Bono Region.
The plan is targeting a whooping 25 billion dollars in the next ten years through exporting of local products.
The goal of the NEDS plan is to achieve substantial increases on manufactured goods and services component of the country’s exports to attain a projected aggregate of non-traditional exports.
Speaking at a day’s capacity building workshop for about 50 local exporters in Sunyani, Mr Francis Fosu-Kwakye, Deputy Zonal officer in-charge of Ashanti, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regions of GEPA said the policy had set out seventeen priority products to work on in order to meet their targets.
The products include processed cocoa, cashew, horticultural products, oil seeds, textile and garments, services among others.
Mr Fosu-Kwakye said the workshop sought to empower the participants with the requisite knowledge and information to enable them to meet the needed certification standards in manufacturing and export.
The GEPA, he said, was ready to assist the local exporters to expand and grow their businesses.
The programme officer in charge of capacity building and Stakeholders Engagement of African Free Continental Trade Area (AFCTA) Secretariat, Grace Antwi-Asante, urged the participants to ensure value addition with their products so as to take advantage of the AFCTA market.
She explained that products that did not meet the required standards were not allowed onto the AFCTA market, adding that there were regulations in place to sanction those who flouted the standard procedures.
Mr Kwame Amponsah who deals in leather products commended the GEPA for organising the training for the participants, indicating that the knowledge acquired would equip him to produce quality products.
He appealed to GEPA to ensure that their members were supported with loans and logistics to expand their businesses in order to realise the target they had set.
FROM DANIEL DZIRASAH, SUNYANI
