GEPA engages farmers and exporters

CEO of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Madam Afua Asabea Asare, interacted with some farmers, exporters and craft artisans in the Eastern Region to find possible ways of exploiting opportunities in the export industry.

The tour forms part of a two day visit to the Eastern Region by the CEO to ascertain the performance of her staff and to identify some of the challenges confronting exporters in the region.

The visit, also afforded her the opportunity to meet with exporters, producers, farmer based organisations and out growers to put her in a better position when formulating policies and programmes for the authority and their stakeholders.

The tour, took the CEO and her team to Maagrace Garment Industries in the New Juaben North Municipality, where they sew in large quantities for both local and international markets.

The facility was established under the Hackman Foundation in 2003 and currently have 350 permanent and non-permanent staff and has the capacity to employ 650 workers.

At Abompe, GEPA has constructed a facility to house over 100 bead makers in the community and also support them with working tools to improve their production capacity to meet international standards.

The visit then continued to Golden Riverside Limited, a pineapple production and exporting firm in the Akuapem South District, where, GEPA as part of its mandate has supported some farms with pineapple suckers, coconut seedlings and Golden Riverside Limited happens to be a beneficiary with 750,000 pineapple suckers.

Other beneficiaries of the free pineapple suckers and coconut seedlings where the team visited include Green Span Farm at Nsakye, which benefited from 3,000 coconut seedlings.

The rest are Lovely Farms which benefited from 890,000 pineapple suckers and Ohu Farms Limited at Mpemehuasem also receiving 1 million pineapple suckers.

In an interview with the media, Madam Asabea Asare said her outfit have the mandate to encourage people to discover new ways of doing what they do, so that they can produce to meet international standards and break into the export market.

She indicated that, there is the need to continue supporting businesses to produce in commercial quantities and look for available market for the products.