<<Print>>

The Member of Parliament for the Afigya Sekyere East Constituency in the Ashanti Region, Hon Mavis Nkansah Boadu, has charged Ghanaians and indeed persons in authority to see the coronavirus pandemic as an invitation for the country to direct her effort and resources towards working at becoming self-reliant and self-sufficient in many sectors. 

According to her, Covid-19, just like the deadly Ebola and the many other pandemics that we have seen in recent times, will certainly pass and be buried in the annals of history. However, it has to be said that the biggest legacy that this pandemic has left with us, is that, it had made Ghana a self-reliant and self-sufficient country in many sectors of endeavor. 

She said, prior to the pandemic, a country like Ghana had been relying heavily on its leading trading partners particularly China, UK and US for imported goods and services. However, she noted that, the pandemic which has spread across the world, has led to a projected global recession with severe consequences on global economies, threatened food security and major disruption of global supply chains of good. 

And so, the country [Ghana] should seize this opportunity to direct its efforts towards becoming self-sufficient in order to assuage the otherwise debilitating impact of the pandemic on the country’s economy, she urged. 

“Due to border restrictions and with global supply chain being disrupted owing to the pandemic, movement of goods and services have greatly been impacted. It has thus brought into focus the need for our country to work assiduously towards becoming self-sufficient and self-reliant, which also falls in line with the President’s vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid. 

Mr. Speaker, this pandemic should reignite a national conversation for a new economic paradigm in Ghana, from a regime of import dependency to a regime of productivity, import substitution and export promotion. 

The emergence of COVID has called for much attention to be placed on the revival of our local industries to boost production of import substitutes thereby making us a self-reliant country. This is to be achieved by rolling out conscious interventions to improve the productive capacity of local industries through the implementation of policies to help boost local production of goods by harnessing our vast natural resources such gold, cocoa, and coffee, among others”, she underscored. 

Hon Mavis Nkansah Boadu made this call in a Statement she made on the floor of Parliament on Wednesday June 3, 2020. She observed in the Statement that our local industries have the wherewithal to rise to the occasion when it matters most, and this, they have amply demonstrated during this period of global health crisis. And so, she urged government and all stakeholders including the regulatory authorities to provide the needed incentives to make these local industries more buoyant. 

“Mr. Speaker, the pandemic has demonstrated the vital role our private sector-led local industries could play if much attention and support is given to them. Also, as it stands now, we are depending largely on local industries for the production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs), ventilators and alcohol-based hand sanitizers to help in the fight against the pandemic. 

Currently, we have also minimized the importation of foreign rice and increased the production of local rice as well as relying solely on local maize from our farmers. Did we need COVID to do these simple things for our own? I don’t think so”, she wondered. 

She concluded that, in the light of the excellent efforts and foreseeable success in Ghana’s fight against Covid-19, we should be very optimistic and confident in our ability to transform our beloved Ghana, with the required focus, consistency and action, from a vulnerable- self insufficient and import-driven economy into a strong- self-sufficient- export driven economy.