Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. John Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanten has revealed that 181 factories are being constructed at different stages of completion across the country under the One-District-One-Factory (1D1F) project initiated by the Akufo-Addo government.

According to him, emphasis should be made that the 1D1F Project is not government creating these factories as it used to be in the Nkrumah’s days as state enterprises, but rather the initiative is for business people who have their monies to create to get support from the government to start.

“This initiative is for business people who have their monies to establish factories in the various districts and then government will only support them to create those factories in the districts”, he stressed.

Addressing the media in the “Meet-The-Press” series organized by the Ministry of Information, Mr. Kwadwo Kyeremanten revealed that 79 companies are at various stages of completion; thus, 57 companies out of the 79 are already on the ground receiving different types of support from the government.

He added that the remaining 22 factories are under construction, summing up with the 57 factories which are already on the ground to make up the 79 factories under the 1D1F project.

He indicated that “some of the supports given to the business people may be loan facility, others are looking for road construction leading to the factory and others also want government procurement and so it is very necessary for the media to explain for people to understand the 1D1F concept very well”.

He again mentioned that before the end of the year, government will provide 56 small scale processing facilities to graduate unemployed youth in some of the districts which have their raw materials being wasted due to unavailable processing machines as they may not need big factories.

“Some of the districts don’t need big factories but may need a machine to process their raw materials like oranges, mangoes and plantain which are going waste and so we are purchasing small machines before the end the year; this one, government is using these machines to help people in the districts to process the raw materials which are going waste. The small scale processing facilities are 56 and the good thing is that these 56 small scale processing machines will be given to the graduate unemployed youth in these identified districts”, he explained.

He reiterated that 50 graduate unemployed youth in each district may be given a small processing machine as their capital to start their own business in the district; thus “they will be the owners of the company”.

“Another 5 common user processing facilities will be given to farmers to process their existing raw materials, 33 projects financed by local PFIs ready to commence implementation before the end of 2019 and 8 projects financed under the CNBM facility ready to commence implementation before the end of 2019; and so when you add up all these, 181 factories are being constructed at different stages of completion”, he disclosed.