Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay has touted his government’s feat in transforming the economy within a period of 18 months.

In his address at the launch of the 2nd Chamber Business Awards 2017, Mr. Ahomka-Lindsay noted that government, since its coming into office has introduced policies geared towards revamping the private sector, promoting the spirit of entrepreneurship and providing opportunities for immense growth and development in the country.

“In the very short period we’ve been given the opportunity by the Ghanaian people to govern, we have been very aggressive in a number of areas. We’ve been aggressive in building the necessary infrastructure to ensure we can support the private sector. We’ve been aggressively promoting the spirit of entrepreneurship, which is a very important aspect because Ghanaians are very entrepreneurial”, he said.

The focus however he says, is not merely to encourage entrepreneurship but to promote the concept of local manufacturing which he believes will reduce importation and consequently translate into growth and development.

“We want to redirect that spirit not to trading someone else’ goods but trading our own goods by ensuring that we manufacture those goods that we are trading, we don’t want to kill our entrepreneurial trading spirit, that’s a very strong spirit. We want to move away from selling someone else’ products to selling our products because of what that impact has to our economy” he noted.

“We have been very focused on attracting and mobilising foreign direct investment from around the world to public-private partnership, joint ventures, and synergies between local entrepreneurship and foreign investors”.

Forming partnerships with key institutions and foreign companies he says are also a crucial focus of government as part of efforts to improve the quality of products in the country for both local use and exportation.

“We want to form partnership, we need to learn the technologies that are out there to help us produce better quality products that Ghanaian consumers and consumers outside Ghana would want”....“I know the GIPC is very focused in trying to find direct investment. From our president to our vice President to Alan Kyeremanten, it is by ensuring we find the finance, the necessary technology, I’m talking about how to help drive our industrial transformation”, he added.