Ekumfi Juice factory, one of the projects under 1D1F
While the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage different sectors of the economy, the government’s audacious ‘One District One Factory’ (1D1F) programme continues to thrive with several projects at different stages of completion.
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, says the government remains committed to the implementation of the initiative.
According to the Minister, the focus of the initiative, this year, is to identify strategic investors to partner the government to establish factories in the districts that lack active business promoters.
Presenting the Mid-Year Budget Review in Parliament, yesterday, the Minister said, “Under this initiative, 232 projects are at various stages of implementation.”
“Among these, 76 are completed and operational, while the remainder, including five medium-size agro-processing factories, are under construction. Twelve of these companies received approval for import duty exemptions to the tune of GH¢34 million. A total of 154 districts out of the 260 districts are benefiting from the programme,” he said.
He added that the next six months will see the construction of 58 small-scale processing factories, under the Enable Youth 1D1F projects, financed by the African Development Bank.
Positive strides
The Minister stated that, until the pandemic, the government was making significant strides in sustaining the economy.
He stated that provisional data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) show that overall real GDP growth (including oil) for 2019 was 6.5 per cent, 0.5 percentage point lower than the revised projection of 7.0 per cent, but 0.2 percentage point higher than the 2018 performance of 6.3 per cent.
“Mr. Speaker, Government’s policy of transforming the economy from one based on taxation to one based on production has yielded dividend over the last three years. Overall real GDP grew at an average of 7.0 per cent over 2017-2019 compared with 2.8 per cent over 2014-2016. Non-oil GDP growth was 5.6 per cent compared with 3.2 percent over the same respective periods.
“Mr. Speaker, the services sector grew by 7.6 per cent in 2019, becoming the best growth-performing sector of the economy for the first time since 2015. This also represented a sharp upturn from the 2.7 per cent registered in the previous year. Subsectors with considerably strong performances were Information and Communication (ICT) and Real Estate, with growth rates of 46.5 per cent and 19.9 per cent respectively in 2019, compared to 13.1 per cent and -6.5 per cent respectively in 2018,” he said.
The Minister added that growth in the industry sector slowed down by 4.2 percentage points from 10.6 per cent in 2018 to 6.4 per cent in 2019. “This growth outturn, however, is considered to be robust given the high growth performances of the Sector in the previous two years and the associated base effect,” he noted.
He further stated that the petroleum subsector recorded an increased growth from 3.6 per cent in 2018 to 15.1 per cent in 2019, but the mining and quarrying subsector, recorded a slowdown from 23.3 per cent to 12.6 per cent over the same period. Water and sewerage, and construction contracted by 4.4 per cent each, compared to growth rates of – 3.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively in 2018. Manufacturing recorded a strong growth performance of 6.3 per cent compared with 4.1 percent in 2018.
“Mr. Speaker, the agricultural sector recorded a growth outturn of 4.6 per cent in 2019 compared to 4.8 per cent in 2018. In spite of the slowdown, this still represented a robust growth performance in light of the sharp growth of the sector in 2017 and the subsequent base effect.
“The marginal slowdown in performance could be attributed to a slowdown in the growth of crops from 5.8 per cent in 2018 to 5.3 per cent in 2019, and contraction of forestry and logging from 2.4 per cent to -1.7 per cent over the same period.
“Real non-oil GDP recorded a growth of 5.8 per cent, compared to the projected rate of 5.9 per cent and the 2018 outturn of 6.5 per cent,” he added.
