It seems most countries within the ECOWAS sub-region have a high confidence in products especially pharmaceuticals produced in Ghana.
Ghana’s Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo who made this revelation said his past encounters with some ECOWAS citizens prove this fact.
“I was talking to the pharmacists in Kumasi over the weekend and I told them a true story. At the ECOWAS Finance Ministers’ meeting in 2003 in Abuja, a colleague Minister of Finance called her ADC to buy her a drug because she was coughing. And when she whispered I heard Ghana and I asked her did you say Ghana. She said yes I did, I told my ADC to buy me a made in Ghana cough mixture. That happened in Nigeria, Abuja.”
“And then the Liberian Minister of Finance also said that in Liberia if you want to avoid fake drugs then you buy made in Ghana products. So there is that confidence built on made in Ghana goods within ECOWAS a population of 350 million,” he said.
The Senior Minister was speaking at the 2017 Ghana Economic Forum on Monday when he made the remark.
The two day event which will end on Tuesday, August 8, 2017 is themed: “Building a Ghanaian owned economy, 60 years after independence.”
Mr. Maafo at the event highlighted four areas he said government was keen in developing to boost the Ghanaian economy.
These he said included improving Ghana’s micro-economic stability, massive infrastructure development, accelerated industrial development and agriculture transformation.
“These four thematic areas should be able to change the complete face of our economy and I’m sure with your support – captains of industry, the banks, we should be able to accomplish this as a cooperative effort for the sake of Ghana. Let us think about future generations. This generation should lay forever a foundation that will make Ghana a centre of industry in West Africa,” he urged.
He said Ghana could achieve the four strategies by domesticating its production and taking hold of other economies within the West African sub-region.
“What are we doing to domesticate that production? Our location even in West Africa is even central; all these should speak to us. Let us resolve to get the economy resolved once and for all. Let us remove this tag of irreversability on our head that Ghana will do well for some time and later we reverse to the bottom then we climb again to the top that cannot do. Once we set on motion and moving we should make it impossible for any government to reverse that motion. And that is why we are looking at the fiscal responsibility law, so you can’t come and run the deficit anyhow. There should be a law restricting you,” he added.
