Companies operating under the free zones enclave exported goods valued at 1.4 billion dollars in the first nine months of this year, as against their total imports of 113.1 million within the same period.
This means that the exports of free zones companies outstripped their imports by more than one hundred percent.
The Executive Secretary of the Ghana Free Zones Authority GFZA, Michael Okyere Baafi, told the Daily Graphic in Accra that the wide variation between the values of imports and exports of companies operating under the free zones programme had brought to the fore the impact that the free zones initiative had made on the country’s balance of trade.
Throwing more light on the operations of free zones companies, Mr Baafi said within the first nine months of this year, there were one hundred and 56 active companies operating under the free zones enclave, where tax exemptions were granted to the firms in return for increased exports.
The free zones Act 1995 Act 504 makes it mandatory for the companies to export a minimum of seventy percent of their products as part of measures to stimulate industrialisation under an import substitution regime.
