Minister for Trade and Industry, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, has called for direct foreign investment from China into priority areas especially the agro-processing and light manufacturing such as apparel, textiles and mineral processing to boost the growth of the Ghanaian economy.

“We want investors to take advantage of the numerous raw materials we have around us.  We need to improve and strengthen our food processing, packaging industries and light manufacturing and China has the technology and resources to help us to do that”, the Minister noted.

The Minister urged the Ambassador to convince Chinese nationals involved in illegal gold mining to convert themselves into legitimate jewellery manufacturers in Ghana.

Dr. Spio-Garbrah made these remarks when the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, H. E. Sung Baohongh, paid a courtesy call on him in Accra to brief him on the new cooperation guidelines which was issued by the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC) and the Ministry of Commerce of China.

The guidelines call for “cooperation in production capacity and equipment manufacturing that will involve moving Chinese production lines to other countries and Chinese companies setting up factories with local partners abroad.”

According to the Ambassador, a list of 12 sectors including iron and steel, non-ferrous metal, building materials, railways, electricity, chemical, textile, automobile, communication, construction machinery, aviation, ship and ocean engineering, have been chosen as the key sectors to promote such cooperation.

“As the largest developing country, China has the obligation, commitment and capabilities to provide impetus for the development of other developing countries through bilateral cooperation in areas such as infrastructure and technological transfer”, she said.

Her Excellency Ambassador Baohongh took the opportunity to invite the Minister to lead a delegation from Ghana to attend the World Investment Forum which will be held in Fujian Province in China from 6-8 September, 2015.  

The Minister proposed to organize an investment forum on Ghana on the margins of the World Investment Forum to enable some of the over 5,000 participants at the forum to focus their attention on Ghana.

China is Ghana’s second largest trading partner after Europe and Ghana is the seventh largest trading partner of China among African countries. China is by far Ghana’s largest supplier of imports, supplying 18.3% of Ghana’s imports worth some US$2,096 billion in 2013.

China is Ghana’s ninth largest export destination, accounting for 2.2% of exports worth US$420 million in 2013. Ghana’s exports to China are dominated by traditional or primary Ghanaian exports, such as unprocessed cocoa, raw metals, wood products, and petroleum oils, which collectively account for 96% of Ghana’s exports to China.