by Justice Lee Adoboe
ACCRA, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Speakers at the just ended Ghana-China Investment Forum have called for the creation of an enabling environment for Chinese industrial concerns to relocate manufacturing plants to Ghana and the West African sub-region.
China's Ambassador to Ghana Sun Baohong pointed out that Ghana and China needed first to strengthen exchanges of ideas, especially since China had, after years of exploration and practice, found a development path that conformed to its national conditions.
"While creating world-renowned development miracle, China has also formed and accumulated abundant advanced ideas on development. China is ready to enhance exchanges of experiences on governance with Ghana to learn from each other, jointly build up our capacity," she noted.
She said as Ghana strived for industrialization and agricultural modernization to transform the economy to add value to its products, China was willing under the framework of FOCAC to support the West African country to reach those goals.
"China is willing to, under the framework of FOCAC, focus more on the requirements of Ghana, explore multiple ways of cooperation, make full use of the tool of investment, vigorously participate in Ghana's industrialization, agricultural modernization," she added.
President John Dramani Mahama and his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, held a bilateral meeting at the Johannesburg Summit of FOCAC in December 2015, pledging to consolidate bilateral traditional friendship.
Bilateral trade between Ghana and China in 2015 grew to 6.6 billion U.S. dollars, up 18.2 percent on year-on-year basis and ranked sixth in that part of Africa. China's non-financial direct investment inflows into Ghana hit 174 million U.S. dollars.
Commending China for locating the West African office of the China Africa Development Fund (CADFUND) in Ghana, Vice-President of Ghana, Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, noted that after receiving investments into the extractive sector over the decades, Ghana was now looking to attracting investments into the agro-industrial sector.
"We have introduced an industrial policy to encourage the growth, diversification, upgrading and competitiveness of the manufacturing sector."
He argued that Ghana could do better than placing sixth among African countries in their trade with China while placing fourth in investment from China.
