Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, is advocating for the enhancement of domestic production and less dependence on importation as a way of boosting the economy.
Speaking at the Standard Chartered Digital Banking Innovation & Fintech Festival in Accra, the Vice President said over-dependence on foreign products is a major contributor to the decline of the economy.
He went on to intimate that the government is currently experiencing never-before trade surpluses that make it near impossible to turn the economy around without the help of the general citizenry.
“The nature of production needs to change. You are seeing Ghana, consistently over the last five years, having more and more trade surpluses. This is like for the first time in about twenty years that we’ve consistently had trade surpluses on our balance of payments. At the same time, we have a lot of current accounts deficits, which means that a lot of the foreign exchange that we are earning from our trade doesn’t stay in Ghana.”
“And one of the areas where we have to address is to reduce the import dependency that we have as a country. But as the global economy is going to realign to the new reality with more self-reliance, Ghana cannot be left behind. We also have to look very closely at how we enhance domestic production and reduce dependence on imports for commodities that we can very easily produce here in Ghana.”
Ghana remains a major importer of food products, with imports of agricultural and related products estimated to have reached $1.9 billion in 2021 alone.
