Ghana Advised to Fix its Ailing Manufacturing Sector to Benefit from AfCFTA 

Prof Samuel Kwadwo Boateng Asante,  Executive Director Centre for Regional Integration in Africa has advised Ghana to fix its ailing manufacturing sector to enable it benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Area  (AfCFTA).

He said: “For Ghana to be able to enjoy that full benefits of the CFTA (Continental Free Trade Area), the country’s manufacturing sector must be robust, competitive and innovative to be able to churn out the goods that will be traded. Sadly this is not the case of Ghana’s manufacturing.”
Prof Asante added that Ghana should harness the opportunities to be presented by the AfCFTA) to revamp that ailing manufacturing sector.
He said many years after Ghana’s independence, the fortunes of the the manufacturing businesses had been at the mercy of ‘cheap’ imports, erratic and costly power, weak policies and pricey credit,  fueled by sheer taste of foreign brands that had displaced local products.
“The challenge before us now is how we can make the CFTA a means to the revitalization of our challenged manufacturing subsector,” Prof Asante underscored.
Prof S K B Asante,  a traditional ruler who delivered a paper titled: “Regional and Continental Integration: What the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) means for Africa and Ghana” at Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College,  Teshie-Accra, also expressed some fears.
Another challenge likely to impede Ghana’s effective implementation of AfCFTA is what he described as “the troublesome is of capacity constraint”, as a study has shown that there are a number of interlocking capacity constraints impeding the country’s effort to realise development opportunities of CFTA and Economic Community of Wast African States (ECOWAS).
His fear was that the national organisations tasked with sustainable development lack institutional capacities to mainstream the ECOWAS and AfCFTA integration agenda into Ghana national development strategies and plans, meanwhile others like the European Union (EU) decisions find their ways into members national policies and programmes.
“No effective apparatus has been established for monitoring and coordinating the country’s involvement in regional and continental integration,” he added.
For Ghana to position itself in this direction,  Prof SKB Asante said it needs to enhance productivity capacity and government flagship programmes like 1 Dristrict-1 Factory initiative,  One Region one Park, Strategic Anchor Industries and Small Medium Enterprises Development, and others were key.
He continued Ghana must avoid the drowning of its largely weak manufacturing companies, saying:  “the private sector needs to first whip up the government and later partner it to draw up a comprehensive policy on how the country can build the capacities of manufacturing sector to benefit fully from the AfCFTA agreement.”
 Prof S K B Asante emphasized that in order for the Ghanaian manufacturing sector to be competitive,  theremis a need for capable,  health and skilled workers.
To him, it policymakers must adjust the curriculum to ensure that skills are adopted to the market and should include special attention to youth.
“Policymakers should revisit education curricula to  focus on skills acquisition and build capacity for entrepreneurship and self-employment through business training at an early stage, skills upgrading at an advanced one, and better promotion of science, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship and mathematics as well as vocational and on-the-job training,” he suggested.
Similarly, the responsibility lies on policymakers must reduce cost of doing business as well as ensuring that cost of energy, access to roads ports, security, financing,  bureaucratic restrictions, corruption,  dispute settlement and property rights, among others.
For the rest of the continent,  he said the AU Agenda 2063, African countries must see to resolve challenges relating to  its overlapping with other agreements, implementation inefficiencies, harmonisation of memebers’ business laws,  and making their nationals understand what integration is all about.
Most importantly, the AU must ensure that the French Colonial Tax Pact on the 14 French speaking African countries is cancelled.
However,  he noted that if concerns raised are not worked on “the CFTA will simply expand the market for cheaper goods produced abroad, rather than stimulate productive capacity by increasing demand for goods and services originating from the African continent.”
 By Akutu Dede Adimer, African Eye Report

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