Local industries urged to register under GEPA

Local industries have been advised to register their operations under the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) to competitively market their products to meet the demands of the international market.

Ms Afua Asabea Asare, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GEPA, who gave the advice, said local industries that registered with the Authority benefited from value for money services such as training courses, certification, quality product packaging amongst others to meet demands of the international market.

She emphasised that "Many local industries think that they are just paying GH¢200.00 for registration every year and that ends it, but registering with GEPA, we provide you with a lot of support and training even more than the registration fee."

Ms Asare was speaking in an interview with journalists in Tamale after visiting and interacting with some local industry players including; producers and exporters as part of her working tour to the Northern Region on Thursday.

The visit was to assess the level of improvement in terms of operations of the various local industries as well as understand their challenges and identify possible support that could be provided to boost their operations.

Some of the local industries visited included; Maltiti A. Enterprise, dealers in shea butter production, AMAATI Company Limited and B-Diet, both agribusinesses.

Ms Asare said GEPA had identified some agro-products,and would study and improve on to help promote them on the international market.

She said local industries had greater potentials and played key roles in government's effort at improving on the country's economy, and encouraged them to register under GEPA to help achieve the goal.

Hajia Abukari Rabiatu, CEO of Maltiti A. Enterprise said there were improvement in the patronage of shea products as the company now sold the product to buyers in the United States of America, Australia among others.

She said the lack of inputs such as milling machine, was affecting the industry in terms of large quantity production to meet increased demand.

She, therefore, appealed to government to support the local industries in the region with inputs to help facilitate the processing of their products.