The Deputy Secretary of Commerce of the United States Department of Commerce, Don Graves, has pledged the United States of America’s support to Ghana to help grow businesses, particularly Micro, Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (MSMEs), a move that he describes will boost Ghana’s economic transformation.

Speaking at the 2022 US-Ghana Business Forum organised by the American Chamber of Commerce Ghana, the Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce, Don Graves said the USA will continue to strengthen commercial connections with Ghana in order to help both countries thrive.

This he believes will transform many smaller and medium-sized Ghanaian businesses into giant ones.

“We have to continue working to accomplish our mission and improve on trade activities. It should be easy for me to move to the Ghanaian authorities to discuss issues and vice versa”, he said.

“We will do everything possible to also encourage US businesses to consider the Ghanaian market to establish subsidiaries or better still partnerships with some Ghanaian investors to help create jobs for the many unemployed youth as well as grow the country’s Gross Domestic Product. The USA is a strong partner of Ghana and will remain an ally”, he stressed.

Speaking at the same forum, a Senior Director at P and G Africa, Temitope Iluyemi, said the potency of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will be questioned if proper plans are not put in place to integrate the activities of trade.

According to her, the secretariat should look beyond presenting trade opportunities to fully-fledged companies and help in providing frameworks to small businesses to scale up.

She said MSMEs should forge partnerships for learning and knowledge networking with existing platforms on the AfCFTA.

This engagement and communications strategy, she believes, would be multi-stakeholder in nature and employ appropriate ways and means of working.

“It is important to see the AfCFTA not just an advantage for big companies, but actually to help scale up the operations of our MSMEs and enable the spread of prosperity across Africa”, she said,

“So when we stress on it, we need to look at the broad picture and livelihoods across Africa”, she added.

The U.S.-Business Forum is aimed at deepening diplomatic and commercial partnerships between Ghana and the United States for the successful implementation of AfCFTA.

This year’s event was under the theme “Leveraging the AfCFTA to Promote U.S Africa Commercial Partnerships”.

In attendance were government officials from both Ghana and the USA, executives of AfCFTA, private sector players and regulatory authorities. Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta and the Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful were key speakers at the event.