Mr Alan Kyerematen — Minister of Trade and Industry The Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan Kyerematen, says 150,975 direct and indirect jobs have been created under the One-District, One-Factory (1D1F) programme.
Giving an update on the programme since the beginning to date in Parliament last Wednesday night, the minister explained that there were 278 1D1F projects at various stages of implementation.
Out of that number, Mr Kyerematen said, 104 companies were currently in operation, while 150 were under construction, with 24 at the mobilisation stage.
“It is expected that when the additional 150 1D1F projects currently under construction are completed, the cumulative number of direct and indirect jobs created will reach 282,792,” the minister said.
Context
The 1D1F programme is a government-assisted private sector-led initiative that seeks to provide generous incentives to businesses to set up productive ventures, mainly factories.
It is expected that the factories will increase the country’s export earnings, while cutting down on imports due because the factories would produce much of the needs of the country locally.
Status
The minister said 165 out of the 278 companies were new projects, representing 60 per cent, while 113 companies were existing ones that were being supported, and that represented 40 per cent.
Mr Kyerematen told the House that the youth had not been left out of the 1D1F programme, as 58 companies were fully owned by youth groups mobilised by the government.
Such youth, he said, were being supported with seed funding to establish their own state-of-the-art agro processing factories in 58 districts under what was referred to as the Enable Youth 1D1F Initiative.The initiative, he added, was being supported by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).“Each of these youth groups have between 40 and 48 individuals as shareholders in each company,” he said.In addition, he said five medium-scale state-of-the-art agro processing common user facilities had also been established and they were owned by groups of farmers in five districts, with funding from African Development Bank (AfDB). Breakdown He gave the sectoral breakdown of the 1D1F companies as 40.6 per cent being agro processing companies, 43.9 per cent being manufacturing companies, 7.9 per cent as meat processing (livestock, poultry and fish) and 7.6 per cent representing others.On the regional basis, Mr Kyerematen said the Ashanti Region had 54 of the projects, Eastern had 37, Greater Accra, 76, Central, 19, Volta, 13, and Northern, six, […]
