“Any measure that reduces the cost of doing business is welcome, and in that regard the 2012 budget is a bold step towards addressing some of the challenges of industry,” Nana Owusu-Afari, President of AGI, has said. In an exclusive with B&FT, Nana disclosed that the Association of Ghana Industries is yet to meet and come up with a comprehensive assessment of the budget. “But, obviously, incentives in the budget statement are not far-reaching enough for the manufacturing and agricultural sectors to bring about meaningful growth. “These two are the anchor sectors for our sustained economic growth and for job-creation; therefore we expect substantial budgetary support for these sectors in the form of incentives,” Nana said. Industry is projected to grow sharply, by 36.2 percent for 2011, riding on the back of the nascent oil economy; but manufacturing is expected to register just 1.7 percent growth compared to 2010 growth of 7.6 percent. The agricultural sector this year is also expected to record one of its lowest growth rates since the 1980s at 2.8 percent, a sharp dip from the 2010 rate of 5.3 percent. While agriculture has registered consistent declining growth rates since the 2008 high of 7.4 percent, manufacturing has had a checquered growth -- 1.2percent in 2007 and up 3.7 percent in 2008, only to register another negative growth of -1.3 percent in 2009. “With the declining fortunes of these two critical sectors, an expectation of the business community was for major interventions to help arrest such poor performances,” Nana said. “The sharp growth rate of industry is rather deceptive, giving the erroneous impression Ghanaian businesses are doing well. “The boost in growth is coming from the oil sector, where the upstream operations responsible for the high growth are controlled by foreign oil companies. Ghanaian companies are largely not benefitting from it yet,” Nana said. The AGI president noted that for Ghanaian businesses, which are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, a turnaround in their fortunes can only be registered if government seriously implements the new industrial policy. The industrial policy, launched earlier in the year, aims at transforming the country over the next five years into a leading agro-industrial economy in Africa. Industrialists agree that in terms of producing the desired outcome of accelerating industrial development, this new policy has a tremendous chance of success. The policy was actually conceived and largely developed by the private sector, thus fostering a sense of ownership among industrialists. The policy has an implementation blueprint, the Industrial Sector Support Programme (ISSP), which was successfully completed this year and which therefore moves the policy beyond just an intention or a mere concept. Key indicators that will be used to measure the overall performance of the ISSP include increased contribution of manufacturing to industrial sector growth and overall GDP growth. Focus will also be on increases in value-addition to local primary products; volume and value of manufactured exports; flows of domestic and foreign direct investment into the manufacturing sector; employment in the manufacturing sector; and on international competitiveness of the manufacturing sector. It will also look at improvements in spatial distribution of manufacturing, as well as the improved performance of domestic firms and SMEs in the manufacturing sector. “With the challenges confronting the two sectors, agriculture and manufacturing -- which incidentally are the focus sectors of the industrial policy -- it is its implementation that is critical to our industrial transformation,” Nana Owusu-Afari said.