The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Trade and Industry committee member Kwaku Kwarteng says the party’s 1-district, 1-factory policy is intended to stem the tide of migration from the rural areas to urban centers.

“We do not want to concentrate industries in Accra, Kumasi, Tema and get everybody migrating to these areas” he told Joy News Monday.

The NPP is under pressure to give details of an industrialization policy which could see a factory established in all 216 districts in Ghana.

The policy was revealed by NPP Presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo while he was on the campaign trail touring the Ajumako/Enyan/Essiam, Mfantseman and Abura/Asebu/Kwamankese constituencies in the Central Region last Saturday.

Akufo-Addo told a gathering “we want to help the private sector to flourish, and we will help establish factories in every district to help create jobs for the people.”

A section of the social media public has condemned the NPP Presidential candidate’s policy, saying he had an eye on November general elections and not on its proper economic planning. It is believed his statement is unrealistic.

But Kwaku Kwarteng who is also Obuasi West MP noted that the ambitious vision is imperative if Ghana is to escape poverty and enter a period of prosperity.

Nearly three out of 10 Ghanaians are below the poverty line-living under GH₵3.80 a day. It is a drop from a 1991 reality of five out of 10 Ghanaians.

Kwaku Kwarteng

“If we are gong to create jobs for our people, then the only way we can do that is to add value to raw material,” Kwaku Kwarteng maintained.

He, however, admitted that the details and dynamics of the industrialization policy have not been completed. “ …that work has not been done yet,” he told Raymond Acquah in an interview, Monday.

But Kwaku Kwarteng does not want a lack of details to undermine the economic and political feasibility of the project.

An NPP government believes that as long as each community or district has a local economy, driving economic activities, all that government ought to do is to find out how it can support that economy to create jobs, he recommended.

“Every community has been surviving somehow…there is nothing wrong with getting government to go into how that community has been surviving to put in more investment,” he said.

He said Ghana has no choice than to industrialise if its touted economic potential to be realized.