Ghana to earn $450b from processing bauxite deposits – Veep
Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia says Ghana stands to earn $450 billion dollars, if the country processes about 900 million metric tonnes of its bauxite reserves.
To this end, he said government would set up a Bauxite Development Authority to facilitate the establishment of an Aluminum Refinery to process the bauxite deposits.
Vice President Bawumia said this in a keynote address delivered at the “Ghana beyond Aid” Conference organised by the Embassies of Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, in partnership with the Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ghana Investment Promotion Centre in Accra.
The forum is aimed at leveraging the private sector and entrepreneurship as the main engines for economic growth.
It also aims at assessing the commitment of government and other development partners, to move from “aid to trade”, examine lessons learnt from private sector partnerships and future steps that should be taken towards moving Ghana beyond aid and thus, make the country the most business-friendly state in Africa.
Vice President Bawumia said it was time the country added value to its natural mineral resources and agricultural produce through agro processing in order to reap maximum benefits.
He cited an instance where Ghana and La Cote d’Ivoire, the two largest producers of the world’s cocoa beans, received paltry $5.75 billion from the chocolate value chain while the chocolate manufacturers were raking-in $100 billion dollars.
He said government would mobilise domestic and regional resources to close the infrastructure gap and other national needs in view of the dwindling overseas development aid to Ghana and Africa at large.
He urged Ghana and other African countries, to instead pursue trade and partnerships as well as leveraging the resources of the private sector to accelerate economic growth.
The Vice President said the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo led government was determined to improve transparency in public procurement processes and all the ministries, department and agencies as well as metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies were being enrolled onto an electronic platform to avoid waste of public funds and ensure value for money.
Ghana beyond aid, the Vice President explained meant mobilising and leveraging domestic resources and revenues and transparently expanding financial inclusion, public services and private financing through local markets and currencies for development.
“It means investing in people and building the capacity of the next generation including access to quality education, training and jobs and building their overall capacity for innovation and knowledge, encouraging entrepreneurship, businesses, investing in infrastructure as basis for future productivity and public-private partnerships as well as building connectivity for data to share information,” he said.
Vice President Bawumia said government, this year, had rolled out policy interventions to enhance financial inclusion of the national economy, improve macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline and debt sustainability in view of the lack of fiscal space for borrowing.
He noted that government was investing in physical and digital infrastructure such as the National Digital Addressing System, National Identification System and Interoperability of the payment system, as well as ensuring electronic procurement and paperless ports processes.
Source: GNA