Ghana is seeking to establish itself as an economic and commercial hub and Gateway to the West African sub-region. From a trade & industry point of view, would you say that the fundaments have been set for this to happen?

To a large extent we have built a solid foundation on which this gateway indeed has already been built. I would like to approach this from a more global point of view. Ghana has been a prime investment destination and the destination of choice both for local investors and foreigner investors.

The first thing to keep in mind about Ghana is the political stability. No amount of investment promotion can make a country an investment destination of choice unless you can guarantee political stability. It is the starting point. In Ghana, strong democratic institutions back the political environment, which is led by a stable political leadership. It becomes a big generic when people say there is a stable political environment. But what is it that makes it stable? It is not just about the traditions or the elections etc. To have strong political and democratic institutions also involves the judiciary, our parliament, the free press and all those other elements that go to underpin the country's stability. I think that these institutions guarantee Ghana's political stability. And therefore, it may not really matter who is in power. When you talk about political stability, it relates more to the institutions that guarantee that stability rather than just the government. It just happens that right now you have a political leadership that has, because of its own political tradition, enhanced the value and the character of these institutions. The political management is of added value.

Another reason why Ghana is becoming a destination of choice for investors is that apart from the political stability, the country is becoming an economic success. We are managing our economy in a prudent manner and that is why you have all the benchmarks and the indicators in the right places. The World Bank and the IMF would only cite you as a success if you are doing the right thing. I think it would really be naïve just to speak about political stability without economic stability when one speaks about attracting investors.

Thirdly, of importance is our infrastructure. You may have other countries that may have more developed infrastructure, but the combination of infrastructure that Ghana has to offer is quite unique. We have two first class ports. Furthermore, there are only three airports classed A in Africa, one of them in Ghana. In energy and telecommunications, there is still some room for improvement, but average business can enhance output on the basis of this. For example, there is Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.(ACS), a premier provider of diversified business process and information technology outsourcing solutions to commercial and government clients worldwide. Also, other such companies have started coming to Ghana. So, if really we did not have a reasonably well-developed telecom infrastructure, this would have been really difficult to achieve.

Is it therefore fair to say that the government of Ghana is establishing higher levels of confidence in its economy? What are the other qualities of the Ghanaian market, which induce new levels of trust and make Ghana's economy a Gateway?

Yes, there must be a level of trust in order for all the investments to be rerouted into this country. But, of course there is also manpower, which is important. I think we have not just high skilled manpower, but also people who are trained abroad and learn very fast. That is an asset. If that manpower base is not there, I doubt there is much we could get done. And then of course, there is the market size. Through Ghana as a Gateway, there is access to a sub-regional market of two hundred and fifty million people.

So, if you combine all the other things I have talked about and the fact that you have the potential for this market, the Gateway idea starts to make sense. Because otherwise, any other country can say that it is a Gateway, because it is located in the sub-region. But, Ghana offers a combination of factors that other countries cannot provide. Ghana is able to live up to its promises.

And then, finally I have to mention the social cohesion, because that is different than the political stability. We have a very stable society. Ghanaians are not extreme in their nature. They are very hospitable and there is a pleasant environment. It is the combination of all these little things that ad up. It is something that people overlook, but it is very important. You can have fantastic societies, which may even have all the democratic institutions that I am talking about. But social cohesion automatically guarantees the stability of a society.

We have political stability, economic stability, infrastructure, manpower, social cohesion, and market access to the ECOWAS region. Moreover, there is also an element of proximity to the most dominant markets like Europe and the United States. As a lawyer would say, all the matters speak for themselves.

Private sector export led growth is what the Kufuor government has been looking for. How does this work out in practice?

I am working on a two-pronged strategy in the ministry, which is focused on the 'new industrial reform and accelerated growth' program. This program has two core strategies. One is to develop and implement a very comprehensive export-led industrialisation drive, which is focused on agro-processing and other manufacturing activities. This also involves mass mobilisations of rural communities and other vulnerable groups. Of primary importance is export-led industrialisation, and secondly, it is also targeting other manufacturing activities. The key word is mass mobilisation of rural communities. In fact, it means the mass mobilisation of Ghanaians. 60% of the Ghanaians live in rural communities. A program that does not take the rural communities into account as a pivotal driving force will not work. You cannot spread development unless you have a strategy that brings rural communities into mainstream industrial activities.

The second strategy is to promote local industrialisation but for the purposes of satisfying the local markets. Export-led growth brings us foreign exchange, but all this does not need to be spending on imports, because then the money goes away again. We need to be able to develop local industries that are producing essentially for the local market. This will cut down on import. These are parallel strategies that need to go together and is therefore a slight qualification of the export-led growth. The two sides of the story will run side by side.

Now within this strategy, of course in Ghana it is very easy to talk about cacao and about mining as two very important sectors that can boost the economy forward. But when you want to really implement your two-pronged strategy efficiently and in a sustainable way, diversification of Ghanaian sources of income revenues is needed. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Ghana cannot perform both strategies just talking about cocoa and gold. Ghana is implementing a comprehensive strategy of export-led growth and import substitution program. We are looking at new growth pillars for the economy, which is essentially agro-based (or they could be other manufacturing activities).

For the agro-based industries I am looking at industrial starch. Ghana is already involved in that and it is part of the Presidential Special Initiatives (PSI). Within this framework there is industrial starch, oil palm, garments and textiles, salt, and cocoa processing. Finally, there is an interesting category called builders woodwork. This is wood processing in the form of knocked down furniture, doors, window frames and such products. There is a very big export market for this now. All these new growth pillars were designed to move us away from over-dependence of cocoa and gold.

Cocoa and gold are currently exported in a raw form. We are now looking at manufactured exports. Now the industrial stacks are intended to be a pro-poor export-led programme in the sense that 90% of farmers in Ghana are already involved in the cultivation of cassava. My plan was to turn to a new growth pillar. We cannot move away from cassava, if already 90% of the people are involved with cassava. The government seeks to implement measures that will bring value, a new meaning to the crop.

Already, we have factories running that provide examples of what this idea will bring to the country. This is not theory at all. One such factory is owned by between 8 to 10 thousand farmers. It is a new concept called the 'corporate village enterprise model' involving communities, but of course managed by the best professionals you can find in the industry. It runs in line with the previously mentioned strategy and gives a new sense of where exactly Africa is going. This whole concept of villages only being capable of doing things on a subsistence level is suicide for your country. If you think that 60% of the population are not capable of doing things that bring them into the modern business culture, then really there is no future. Therefore, I just applied all the modern business concepts and helped the farmers to form a corporate entity like a stock company. The difference is that we are bringing in the right kind of management.

This explains why your ministry is now called the Ministry of Industry, Trade & Special Presidential Initiatives?

These initiatives are big new growth pillars for the economy, which will diversify our income and revenue base as a country, while at the same time integrating the poor in a more practical and effective way into mainstream economic activities. We do not want to keep them on the fringes. In conclusion, we are talking about the best management, the best technology, and it is also export oriented.

So, one of the key things that you are trying to do is bringing trust back into the 60% of the Ghanaian population that have been left for such a long time?

That is exactly the meaning of it and for me this is what underpins Ghana's whole political stability and social cohesion. If 60% of the population remains for much longer outside the mainstream of the economy, all the nice things that I have talked about would not be sustained. That is the root cause of all these upheavals in otherwise good countries that should have been performing well. There is no depth in the economy. You cannot rely solely on foreign investors. Ghana has to rely on the majority of its own people.

Public-Private partnerships have been given special prominence. Is this then what we can expect also looking at the future?

The PSI is probably one of the most practical cases of public-private partnerships. Representing the government, I provided the leadership and the vision for the community. The question was what I could do with what 90% of the poor people were already doing. And, how can 8 thousand farmers come to understand that they can be part of the limited liability company that can have this kind of soul? Somebody has to do it for them.

But, the government has no dollar shares in the companies. It is the private sector. I am trying to transform the notion of the private sector just being the Unilever's and the Nestle's. When we talk about private sector export-led growth, this involves more than that.

Another very important part of that strategy is the free economic zones. How do they come into play?

The free economic zones are of great importance. I try to approach all this from a practical point of view. You can always get a reality check when you go back to the strategy and see whether it fits or not.

Now I saw these free zones and I realize that they had been empty for years. One of the presidential special initiatives that were introduced is the garment textiles initiative. This is also export-led as it is industrial, but it is also beneficial for poor, not necessarily for the 60% of the rural community, but for vulnerable groups in urban communities. I do not want to pretend that when you solve the problem of the 60%, in rural areas, then everything is solved. We have to deal with the vulnerable groups in urban communities as well. The only people for whom we will have a different program are the well off.

I am developing a new garment city in the free zone enclave. It all comes down to public-private sector partnership again. We cannot as a government leave the responsibility just to the private sector, because it will not necessary happen automatically. The government needs to facilitate this development in a more practical way. Therefore, I am now providing the same kind of leadership to populate the free zones by building over a hundred garment factories, which will be completed in 2004. I am taking portions out of the free zone enclave and I am developing that as a city with only garments and textiles.

Interestingly, the government is providing the leadership, but the ones who are taking risks in terms of renting out this factory units and putting machines in them are the private sector. We are just facilitating, but in a grandiose way. This makes it possible for us to achieve accelerated growth, because unless government plays a role nothing will grow. You can talk about diversification in the way that you can talk about real export-led, but how many companies will come on see? I need to create a big dream for the private sector and then facilitate the private sector to drive it forward.

Certainly this program offers many possibilities for investors. Could you elaborate on this?

This very proactive way of getting government to provide a direction also signals to the private sector that these are areas where we know they and we can succeed. Literally, we are providing everything. We have provided all the market access, the identification of the markets in the EU and the United States and we have done all the training for the manpower.

I have set up a model commercial production unit here in Accra for garment, which is a model that the private sector can replicate. It does not mean much for people to say that the government is facilitating and providing an enabling environment, if the government does not go beyond that and shows what a medium sized garment factory will look like, how to run it commercially, and what the required type of skilled manpower is. We are creating a blueprint that can become the practical model for the private sector.

This is how you come to a Golden Age of Business in a practical way. We need to understand what it takes to really support the private sector. The policies by themselves do not automatically generate a response. A lot of African countries have the feeling that they have done all that they had to do in terms of policy, but there is no response. We need to go beyond that.

Taking into account all that has been said and looking ahead into the future, what then is you vision for Ghana?

I want to move beyond a visionary idea into practical demonstration of how the private sector can participate in the development of Ghana. A vision must be practical. My vision for Ghana now is to see Ghana became a medium industrial hub not only for West Africa but for all of Africa. I want Ghana to set the standards through best practices, but also by becoming a commercially viable industrial hub. That translates back into that if you come into Ghana in the next 5-10 years you will probably be amazed at what you find there. The most significant thing that I can see is that Ghana will have different industries sprung up and this time not only in the cities, but all over the country. Most will be export-led, but not all of them. It will have diversified Ghana's economy. It will have brought the majority of the Ghanaians in the mainstream of economic activities and provide the basis to enhance the income of revenue into our economy. This is what then goes into supporting infrastructure development and construction. In the end, the government can earn more from taxes. That is the only way the government can finance development. Companies have to be grown. We have to facilitate the growth of companies so that we can earn more money to finance development and the reduction of poverty.

All this is possible within the context of liberalized trade regime, which is now what the world is moving to. We are positioning Ghana within the new multilateral trading system of the World Trade Organisation, which is opening the world slowly, but steadily, to Africa. I am only positioning this country to take advantage of the market opportunities that are opening up for us.