Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited and the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) will soon team up to improve promotion of indigenous products abroad.
To this end, the bank, a member of the Fidelity Group, made up of Fidelity Bank, Fidelity Capital Partners Limited and Fidelity Securities Limited, as part of its celebration of five years of excellence, has donated a cheque for GH�5,000 to support the activities of the GEPA.
GEPA has set a target to attract $5billion Non-Traditional Exports (NTEs) commodities by 2015. NTEs are the third major export earner for the nation after cocoa and gold.
Jim Baiden, Deputy Managing Director of Fidelity Ghana, said �the collaboration will unlock the export financing industry� where his outfit plays a major role, having a trade desk specifically targeted at the Asian market. He therefore encouraged exporters and traders to join the Fidelity Business Club in order to take advantage of trade finance products from the bank.
�Fidelity has chalked much success as an indigenous bank and currently the seventh biggest bank in the country in terms of deposits. We want to support GEPA to help grow and expand the capacities of exporters�, Mr. Baiden said.
Continuing, he said �we have an export financing development programme and we want to partner you to support the export sector. We are aware that the entire export sector brings immense foreign income and supports the balance sheet of most banks.�
�What we need to do as a country�, he noted, �is to turn around the export sector and transform it�. He entreated GEPA to hold exporter forums where Fidelity could sensitize the different categories of exporters of various export finance products and schemes.
He said the bank has increased its networks to 31 from 4 branches in 2008 and has 35 ATMs and more than 150,000 customers. Mr. Baiden said Fidelity is the first bank to be accorded the ISO 27001 certifications in 2010 for excellence in the management of information security systems.
Kwadwo Owusu Agyemang, Chief Executive Officer, GEPA, welcomed the partnership, saying, �For us we have always looked for this type of collaboration to help us advance the export sector. The banks are the major institutions we seek collaborations with�.
He called for the merger of the Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC) and the GEPA since they have similar operations. He believed such a move will help boost both investments and exports.
Mr. Agyemang added that GEPA intends to strengthen trade relations particularly to Sub Saharan Africa. �Presently, Europe is the biggest market of Ghana in terms of NTEs followed by Africa.�
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