The Suame Magazine Industrial Development Organization (SMIDO) has launched a Regional Investment Gateway Blueprint to brand Suame Magazine as the Investment Gateway to Ashanti and the West African sub-region to mobilize Domestic Investment Capital to implement a Medium Term Plan towards industrialization by 2016.

The 100-paged Regional investment policy blueprint which also embodies a medium term industrial development plan dubbed: The Regional Investment Gateway Project: Promoting Local-Content Investment & Policy for Industrialization was launched by the Akyimpimhene of Kumasi, Nana Aduse-Poku in Kumasi with a call on policy stakeholders to embrace the policy document as a national industrialization strategy to develop Ghana as the industrial hub of West Africa.

Oheneba Adusei -Poku, who launched the document authored by Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo, consultant to SMIDO on behalf of the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, expressed worry at the increasing rate of commercialization as an economic culture in the country at the expense of a real aggressive strategy towards skills-led industrialization for sustainable job creation and economic prosperity. Presenting the Regional Investment Gateway project, the consultant to SMIDO,Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo said, the major thrust of the blueprint is to brand Suame Magazine as Ashanti and West African Regional Investment Gateway project to mobilize Domestic Investment Capital in what he calls Domestic Direct Investment(DDI) as an alternative to Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) to implement an aggressive industrialization strategy for the country.

The second major thrust of the Regional Investment Gateway project is exploit the potential of the local content policy to integrate Suame Magazine into the supply chain of the Mining Oil and Gas Industry to generate funding to administer the Roadmap towards industrialization.

According to the Mr. Azongo, the current investment profile reveals that Suame Magazine has a market jurisdiction of over 250,000,000 population. The Current Market outlook in West Africa show that Burkina Fasso is currently Suame Magazine’s leading market with a significant market performing share of 32% followed by Niger ,Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Togo and Nigeria with market rates of 15%, 14%,13% ,11 and 10% respectively.

The Regional Investment Gateway branding is to afford the opportunity to develop Suame Magazine as the major investment conduit to the West African Market with its own unique brand of innovative engineering products and services.

Suame Magazine is estimated to support a livelihood population of over 1,300,000. This figure constitutes 63.9% of the population of Kumasi, and 27.2% of the entire population of Ashanti per the 2010 population census. The Livelihood Support Population as a ratio of the current population of the country per the 2010 census indicates that Suame Magazine Livelihood support population constitute about 5.3% of the entire population of Ghana.

These statistics according to Mr. Azongo shows that the artisanal engineering industry could be strategically planned to ensure a more Equity-Based Local Content policy to maximize the benefits of the Mining, Oil and Gas prospects for the entire the country. The current research revealed that the population of the Three High Poverty Incidence regions of Ghana (Northern,

Upper East and Upper West) makes up 17% of the population of Suame Magazine. The President of SMIDO, Mr. Sarpong Boateng in his welcome address called on Government to reconsider its old-pledge provisioned in the 2010 budget statement to support Suame Magazine in this year’s budget to implement the Artisanal Engineering skills development programme under the Suame Magazine Automatics Technical Institute (SMATI) project with KNUST.