The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta has disclosed that, a total of GH¢430.7 million has been mobilised from local financial institutions to support the One-District-One-Factory (1D1F.)
According to him, government has sourced external funding and credit lines in the sum of US$700million to address access to finance challenges and Exim Bank’s Facility of US$ 300 million with the US Exim will accelerate the 1D1F program.
At the presentation of the 2019 Mid-Year Review Budget, Mr. Ofori Atta told Parliament that, “The IDIF initiative was designed to support the private sector to establish at least one industrial enterprise in every district.
Currently, 181 projects are at various stages of implementation, spread over 110 districts across the 16 regions of the country.
As at Mid-Year, 57 projects were in operation providing 10,753 direct jobs and 43,094 indirect jobs. An additional 33 projects financed by local Partner Financial Institutions (PFIs) will commence operation by the end of 2019”.
Additionally, eight large scale processing plants are expected to begin operations by December 2019. Government has also secured funding to commence the construction of 56 small scale processing facilities and five common user processing facilities for organised farmer groups by the end of December, 2019, he added.
In order to enhance the competitiveness of the 1D1F companies, The Minister, revealed that, the government has obtained Parliamentary approval for a package of incentives including: a 5-year tax holiday; exemption from duties, taxes and levies on imported machinery, equipment and parts and selected raw materials not already exempted by law for 1D1F companies.
Government is collaborating with the private sector to facilitate the establishment of a number of modern Industrial Parks and Special Economic Zones (SEZ). The following parks are currently under development: The Dawa Industrial Park at Dawa on the Accra–Aflao Highway currently has 2,000 acres fully developed out of 22,000 acres available land; and West Park Industrial Estate at Shama in the Western Region is constructing onsite infrastructure for its 400-acre industrial park.
Story by Edzorna Francis Mensah
