The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Dr Afua Asabea Asare, says successful needs assessments of over 1,000 SMEs have been carried out in 112 districts in the country.

The aim, she said, is to enhance their technical and human resource capacity so that they could become exporters in the short to medium term.

Dr Asabea Asare said this at the 64th Annual General Meeting of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) on the theme: Navigating the Uncertainties of Our Business Landscape to Sustain Productivity.”

Delivering the keynote address, she said the initiative had been implemented under the ‘One District, One Exportable Product Strategy under the National Export Development Strategy with plans in place to upscale the activity in 2025 and beyond.

She said the interventions had been achieved across the country due to the partnership with key agencies, including the Ghana Standards Authority, Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Enterprises Agency, and AGI.

The CEO said as part of building the expertise and resilience of local businesses to scale up their operations and meet international standards, GEPA had initiated partnerships to help promote compliance with international standards, enhance exporters’ competitiveness and ensure sustainable practices across the value chain.

“Recognising the significant role that SMEs play in exports, we have implemented the SME Banking Forum, where the banks engage SMEs to provide tailor-made financial packages to the SMEs to expand their reach and build resilience,” she said.

Some of the organisations involved in the collaborations with GEPA are the International Trade Centre, the National Trade Centre in Geneva, and local institutions.

The primary goal of the National Export Development Strategy is to ensure that non-traditional export revenues increase exponentially from $2.85 billion in the year 2020 to $25.3 billion by the end of 2029.

The strategy outweighs several key interventions, programmes and activities to be implemented annually and one key part of it is to build and expand the required human capital for industrial export development and marketing.

The strategy is underpinned by three pillars – improvement of the business regulatory environment, improvement of the supply capacity of key products and services and strengthening of the human resources to enable improved performance of the export sector.

Dr Asabea Asare said since the implementation of the strategy in 2021, the export sector stakeholder institutions and the private sector have seen a growth share in non-traditional export revenues, from $2.85 billion in 2020 to almost $4 billion in 2023.

Dr Humphrey Ayim Darke, President of AGI, said the industry witnessed some recovery and had experienced relative stability in the early part of this year but it was not without intermittent power outages.

He said whilst the VAT waiver on locally produced textiles remained in force, the waiver of VAT on locally manufactured sanitary pads also took effect this year to make the sector competitive.

He said, “Today, our local manufacturers enjoy the dual benefit of the Upfront Relief of VAT and at the same time the in-bond manufacturing dispensation that grants a duty deferment on imported raw materials.”