The Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana (CIMG) has appealed to government to brand and market the newly created six regions to boost the tourism potentials of the country.

This came to light at the launch of the CIMG Regional Brand Index which saw the Ashanti region identified as the most branded region in terms of culture and heritage, local tourism as well as economic climate, among other criteria with an overall average of 79.42%.

It was followed by the Greater Accra Region with a rate of 79.23%. However, the Ahafo region was ranked the lowest with 8.05%.

Speaking to Joy Business on the sidelines of the launch of the report, Chief Executive Officer of the Bureau of Marketing Social Research, Isaac Gwumah, urged government to take advantage of the report and brand its new regions to boost their tourism fortunes.

“If the regions and their coordinating councils and other government agencies begin to come together and attempt to do deliberate branding, marketing and telling stories of the regions, we will have an instance were smaller regions will out stage the big boys like Ashanti and Greater Accra. And it’s possible”.

Launching the Report, Head of Delivery, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Office of the Vice President, Kweku Appoah Adu said this report will afford government the opportunity to map-up strategies to decide which areas to focus its trade investments on.

“What needs to happen is that the initiators of the research, must forward work to the Office of the President, among other organisations, so that based on the deeper research they have undertaken, government will be able to tell where the best of products or produce can be found as we navigate this whole issue of boosting intra-Africa trade”.

On his part, President of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana, Dr. Daniel Kaser-Tee, said this report will become the marketing tool for practitioners to brand their various regions they find themselves in.

“Let us look beyond which region is first and last. In that report, you will notice that some of the new regions are not doing well in terms of overall scores. We’ve got to leverage on areas of weaknesses to improve on them. So consciously, we must do that”.

CIMG Regional Brand Index Report is to aid in the marketing of the economic potential of all 16 regions of the country.