Alan's Failed PSIs To Be Revived

…Trade Ministry takes steps to revitalize flopped projects

As Mr. Alan Kyerematen continues his campaign to become the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he is constantly confronted with questions about how he managed the Presidential Special Initiative (PSI) projects as Minister in charge of Trade, Industry and PSI under the NPP government.

Mr. Kyerematen’s intra-party opponents say one needs not go beyond examining the state of the PSI projects under Mr. Kyerematen’s supervision to know that he was a failed Minister, who has no positive ministerial track record. Alan’s opponents say the PSIs were a complete flop and a reflection of his poor managerial and leadership skills.

But supporters of the presidential hopeful hold a contrary view. For Alan and his followers, the PSI projects were a huge success and a political achievement rather than a failure. Supporters of Alan’s presidential bid tout the PSI projects on his campaign platforms, claiming the projects were well-managed, profitable and above all, generated a lot of employment.

In the light of the controversy over the true state of the PSI projects under Alan, The Business Analyst has been exploring the issue at the Trade Ministry, where information gathered so far points to the fact that the PSI projects were a total failure.

When in an exclusive interview with Trade Minister, Hanna Tetteh, The Business Analyst asked about the state of the PSI projects as at the time the government of the National Democratic Government took over power in January 2009, her initial remark was, “It is an interesting area”.

The Minister explained that when the NDC came to office, there were PSI projects on garment, cassava, oil palm and salt production. She said the PSI on garment had training schools in Accra and Kumasi but were never opened.

“The PSI also had property at the multi-purpose industrial part of Tema that was given out to some garment manufacturing companies. Only one of them was in operation when we took over,” Ms. Tetteh explained.

Contrary to expectations that the PSI factories belonged to the government of Ghana and the citizenry for that matter, the Minister revealed that the factories that were operating in Adjabeng were private-owned, and even those were not operational because there was no transformer to ensure constant electricity supply.

The story on the oil palm project was no different. Out of 33 oil palm nurseries, only some 19 nurseries were functional with teething problems and not even a single oil palm processing mill had been established. The cassava and salt projects had no success stories either. The salt project was actually a one-man project.

Despite this monumental failure, Ms. Tetteh assured that her Ministry was taking steps to revive the various projects. She told The Business Analyst that the Ministry, through the Medium and Small Scale Enterprises project, has secured funding to acquire a transformer to ensure regular power supply to the factories at Adjabeng.

“At the Tema enclave, there is a US company that has expressed interest in taking over one of the companies for garment processing. We have allowed them to go ahead; they should be starting within the next two months,” she explained.

She further elaborated that the PSI on salt was being absorbed into the mainstream of the Ministry of Trade and Industry and that “It will now be controlled by the Director of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, because I think that is where it should properly be focused”.

The Minister opined that farming projects could be better managed by the Ministry of Agriculture because they “…are the proper responsibility of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.”

Explaining the steps being taken to revive the oil palm sector, she said, “What we are doing now that the oil palm nurseries have been started is that we will do a survey of the actual acreages of land cultivated so that we can determine how best we can encourage the setting up of oil palm processing mill. But we don’t think that the agricultural activity should be the responsibility of the Ministry of Trade while the technical staff and extension services are with the Ministry of Agriculture”.

On how to revive the project on cassava and starch production, Hon. Hanna Tetteh explained: “We want to restart the activities of the factory, so what we are doing in this case is encouraging the cultivation of cassava in the areas around to feed the factory.

“We have a team on the ground tasked to work with the Ministry of Agriculture ensure that we can encourage the cultivation of high starch content cassava so as to produce the right kind of processing material for the manufacture of starch.”