Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has indicated that out of the 260 districts in the country 154 are at the moment “benefiting” from government’s flagship programme One District One Factory (1D1F).
This reveals that, 106 districts are yet to witness the establishing of a factory in their areas.
Government, prior to the ascension of power promised to build a factory per district during its four year mandate.
However, according to the Finance Minister, as at 23 July, 2020, six months before the government’s tenure expires, “A total of 154 districts out of the 260 districts are benefiting from the programme.”
The Minister pointed out that, “58 small-scale processing factories,” which will be bankrolled by the African Development Bank will be constructed in “the next six months” which translates into the remaining period of the government’s first term.
These 58 factories, according to the Minister of Finance will be under an offshoot of the 1D1F dubbed “Enable Youth 1D1F projects.”
Also, the government has forecasted that, “construction of 36 out of the remaining 1D1F projects will commence in August 2020 in 36 Districts. These projects are being jointly financed by the Government of Ghana and participating financial institutions (PFIs).”
COVID-19 stalling the progress 1D1F
During his presentation of the budget at Parliament, Mr Ofori-Atta said that, even though the COVID-19 pandemic has created avenues to be exploited under the 1D1F initiative, it has also disrupted business operations. This has caused the government’s projected timely plans to be stalled.
“Mr. Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented new opportunities for 1D1F supported companies in selected sub-sectors of industry. These include garments and textiles (such as the production of PPEs), processed foods, fruit juices and non-alcoholic beverages, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products. The travel restrictions and disruption of global supply chains have reinforced the need for Ghana to build local productive capacity for import substitution, in line with the vision of His Excellency the President for industrial transformation in every district.
“On the other hand, COVID-19 restrictions and protocols, including social distancing and workplace contingency measures, have increased the cost of factory operations, while sales revenues have been impacted negatively as a result of cancelled export orders. With regards to factories under construction, completion schedules have been affected by the slowdown in labour deployment due to social distancing.”
Update of factories operational
On December 13, 2019, President Akufo-Addo disclosed during a media encounter at the Jubilee House that, 58 factories were already operational. The President indicated that, it was the plan of the government to inaugurate an additional 26 in the first half of this year, which at the time, according to the President, were at various stages of completion.
The Finance Minister on Thursday July 23, 2020 made it public that, 76 factories have been completed so far.
According to the Minister, among the factories that are being built, “76 are completed and operational, while the remainder, including five medium-size agro-processing factories, are under construction. Twelve of these companies received approval for import duty exemptions to the tune of GH¢34 million.”
He added that, this year, the government’s flagship industrialization programme will be focusing on the identification of “strategic investors to partner Government to establish factories in the districts that lack active business promoters.”
Cost of implementation
Even though Finance Minister did not make clear how much the additional factories will cost the nation, government has indicated that, it will cost the country US$10 billion for all the districts across the country to successfully benefit from the implementation of the flagship programme. However, it will be instructive to note that this figure was arrived at when the administrative districts in the country were 216 before further splits by government pushed the number to 260.
