A future Progressive People’s Party (PPP) government will shift Ghana’s economy away from raw material exportation to value addition in order to create more jobs for the people of Ghana, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, presidential candidate of the PPP, has said.
According to him, just like most advanced countries including the United States of America, if value addition to agricultural produce in Ghana is prioritised, the country will be able to feed all of its citizens and get surpluses for export.
Speaking during the Institute of Economic Affairs Presidential Debate in Accra on Tuesday November 22, Dr Nduom said: “I am not interested in this raw material export business. I am just simply not interested. The converse of it is that I am also not interested in the importation of any and everything that someone wants to bring to Ghana, so my solution (to the economic problems) is that, what is it that we produce in Ghana?
“Let me start with the very basic and fundamentals. Why should I go and do non-traditional export of yam. I want to process the yam into yam chips, just as in Ghana we now eat potato chips. I have priced the cost of a factory to produce yam chips and you can have a yam chips production factory in Brong Ahafo (and) Northern Regions and it is feasible, it can be done. If it is maize, we should not just go to the mill every now and then; we can have the processing factories.
He added: “I lived in a small town in the US with less than 2000 people and because they are corn-growing people in that community, there are two corn processing factories there. Whatever the farmer produces is bought and, therefore, (they) solve the problem of having a market. When they have a surplus, then they shift the surplus to us. Even the surplus, in terms of the raw materials, the American government buys it and stores it and when we Africans become poorer and we have difficulties, that is what they send to us as aid.
“So, what I am saying is that all that we need to do is to emulate the good examples that happen and are happening in many parts of the world by processing the rice properly, processing the maize properly. We process the yam properly, we feed ourselves first, then we export. As we are feeding ourselves we are preventing ourselves from importing and we are keeping the monies right here in our own pockets.”
Source: ClassFM
