Awal urges businesses to tap into US$500bn West African market

The Minister for Business Development, Dr. Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, has urged Interplast Limited as well as Ghanaian businesses in general to look beyond Ghana and tap into the over-US$500billion West Africa market.

“West Africa is getting integrated; government will support Ghanaian businesses to expand beyond the country to be able to feed into the 360 million people in the sub-region,” he said, adding that: “We need to modernise our agriculture system to ensure that we can feed our country and beyond.”

Speaking at the launch of Interplast’s Ingreen Drip Irrigation System in Accra, Dr. Awal explained that from October this year government will embark on massive infrastructure development to construct roads, bridges, airports and rail-lines, among others, as part of measures to help businesses be more efficient and productive.

Interplast’s Ingreen Drip Irrigation System is a new irrigation technology for transporting water from dams to farms, and is to be carried out under the One Village, One Dam (1V1D) initiative aimed at ensuring food security while reducing food import.

According to Interplast – the largest manufacturer of Unplasticised Polyvinyl Chloride (UPVC) and High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) pipes in West Africa – the new product line fits into its Ingreen Irrigation Solutions, to make sure water from dams get to farms in the safest, most cost-effective and efficient way.

Managing Director of Interplast Ltd., Hayssam Fakhry, said the development of Ingreen Irrigation solutions is aimed at supporting government’s strategic plan to sustain agriculture, and that the company is committed to investing its resources in developing innovative products to support the country achieve its goals.

Commenting on benefits of the Drip system, he said it ensures water gets to the roots of the plants through drippers that use low volumes of water. Drip systems also ensure very little water is lost through evaporation, and their low-flow allows large areas to be watered from the available water supply, he said.

The technology, he further explained, is very varied. He said they range from a simple system that the farmer connects to water to an advanced one by which irrigation managers can operate multiple irrigation systems from an office and receive automatically-generated reports and alerts on their mobile phones or tablets.

Products that fall within the drip-irrigation system include: main lines and sub-main lines; drip tape; valves, filters; and accessories.

The locally-produced Ingreen irrigation solution is expected to cut down the cost of expenditure on farm inputs, as farmers have had to depend on expensive imported systems.