Deputy Dutch ambassador to Ghana Katja Lasseur says Ghana must court more investment partnerships with the private sector to realise its ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda.

In an interview with GhanaWeb, she expressed that despite Ghana being endowed with several resources, a strong public private partnership is needed to move from aid to trade.

“As a Dutch government we believe that Ghana is a growing economy and it has a lot of resources and it is very much capable of funding its own development. But in our experience, this means a lot of investments from the private sector”.

“While we as a Dutch government treasures to move from aid to trade we also like to help the Ghanaian government achieve the same status. This would be done through the sharing of ideas and technology,” she stated.

Katja Lasseur made these comments on the sidelines of the inauguration of a National Advisory Committee to oversee the activities of the National Initiatives for Sustainable and Climate-Smart Oil Palm Smallholders (NISCOPS) project.

NISCOPS is a project of Solidaridad West Africa, funded by the Government of the Kingdom of Netherland to build the capacity of smallholder oil palm farmers.

On the NISCOPS project, the deputy ambassador said the initiative is in line with her government’s purpose hence their funding support.

According to her, the Dutch is sponsoring NISCOPS since “it will help oil farmers implement best management practices, intensification, rehabilitation and sustainable climate-smart practices for increased productivity."

Ghana currently has an unmet demand of 35,000 tonnes of palm oil. The broader ECOWAS sub-region has an unmet demand of 850,000 tonnes. This presents an opportunity for Ghana to scale-up production of the cash crop to satisfy local and regional demand for much-needed foreign exchange.