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Opening the Gateway to West Africa Ghanaians are confident that they can outperform their neighbours and attract more investment The centrepiece of Ghana's trade and investment policy is its Gateway Project, the aim of which is to make the country the preferred base for international trade and investment in West Africa. The 16 states of the region offer a potentially attractive market of 250 million and are grouped together as the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). A determined attempt is being made by the Government in Accra to ensure that Ghana establishes itself as the leading player in the Ecowas grouping. It has scored a significant success by winning the backing of the World Bank, which is funding 90 per cent of the cost of the $60 million Gateway Project, with Ghana supplying the rest. It is a seven-year programme which is scheduled to be completed in 2005. There are three main elements to Gateway: the establishment of export processing zones, free ports and an open skies policy. All the elements of the project are to be private-sector driven, with the Government's role limited to facilitating, regulating and monitoring the activities of the zones' developers, operators and enterprises. In this respect the Government is demonstrating that it means business. A Gateway secretariat has been established as the project implementation unit and monthly meetings are being held to co-ordinate the activities of the customs, investment centre, free zone board, civil aviation authority and environmental protection agencies. Monitoring these activities is the Gateway Oversight Committee, whose members include the ministers of finance, trade and industry, roads and transport, and national security, and the governor of the central bank. The chairman is John Atta Mills, the Vice-President. G Sipa-Adjah Yankey, chief executive of the Gateway programme, says decisions taken at this level are not questioned by anyone. Port facilities are being restructured in such a way that all of its activities, such as cargo handling and container terminal management, will be in the hands of the private sector with the port authority the landlord and regulator. "The port is not going to be privatised. It is the activities of the port that will be," says Dr Yankey. Revenue from the port in its new guise is expected to double. Access to the export processing zones is available to firms that export at least 70 per cent of their production. Participants are given special privileges and incentives that include simplified investment approval procedures, tax abatements and duty-free concessions. More than 70 enterprises have been approved to operate in the free zones. These include Blue Skies Products, which processes and packages pineapples and other fresh fruits for shipment to Britain, and Starkist International, whose local subsidiary exports £50 million worth of tuna a year. Most of the free zone operations involve investments of between £150,00 and £300,000 and are credited by Dr Yankey with having created about 10,000 jobs. Dr Yankey says the next step in the project will be to restructure the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, dividing it into an authority responsible for safety, security and regulation, and an airport authority responsible for providing the necessary infrastructure such as car parks and catering facilities. Many
French companies are coming in "We expect to have private sector investment in the provision of services at the airport," says Dr Yankey. "We have a team working on the selection of a consultant for this process." Customs and Excise procedures are to be restructured and from June mobile X-ray machines are scheduled to be in operation at ports and airports. "We shall be the first West African country to have them," says Dr Yankey. "This will increase the speed of examining goods and alleviate congestion." Eventually they expect to have larger, fixed-base machines, similar to equipment used in Europe, to examine lorries loaded with goods. The target is to ensure that by the completion of the project the Ghana customs service will be operating to the benchmark international standard. The Ghanaians are confident that they will be able to outperform their West African neighbours in attracting international trade and investment in several respects. First, because English rather than French is the language of international commerce and second, by offering a greater degree of social and political stability and a greater level of skilled labour. Dr Yankey says although Britain is the major investor in Ghana, many French companies are coming in because of the stability and the backing the country is receiving from the international agencies. Efforts are also under way, he says, to make the Ecowas partnership more functional with Togo and Benin showing interest in participating in an active free-trade area with Nigeria and Ghana. Officials of Ghana and Nigeria are meeting in an attempt to establish physical links such as a railway between Accra and Lagos, a common power pool and air services. At present the one advantage the Ivory Coast has over Ghana is the port of Abidjan, but one element of the Gateway Project is to improve Accra's port facilities by increasing its depth so that larger vessels can be accommodated and, in the long term, developing a new harbour on the east side of the one that is now at Tema. Overland, Ghana
has a significant regional advantage. The distance to Ouagadougou,
the capital of the landlocked Burkina Faso, from Accra is 540 miles,
while from Abidjan it is 840 miles and from Lome in Togo it is 720
miles. "We've made a good start and we intend to continue," says Dr Yankey. |