Accra, July 22, GNA - The Ministry of Trade and Industry has commissioned a business plan towards the establishment of the first Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Park at the Tema Free Zones community.

The ICT project, being undertaken in collaboration with the Ministry for Communication, is expected to provide the infrastructure and business support services to operators in the export-oriented small and medium ICT business, to maximize their growth potential. Ms Hannah Tetteh, Minister of Trade and Industry, announced this on Tuesday at the "Meet the Press" series in Accra.

She said her ministry was committed to developing a web based product gallery to promote made in Ghana products and to provide opportunities for Ghanaian Small and Medium-scale Entrepreneurs (SMEs) to market their products.

"We believe this project will help facilitate buyer-seller match-making, as well as provide online services for training, product development and adaptation, proper packaging, and labelling for the Ghanaian entrepreneur," she stressed.

Ms Tetteh announced that her ministry in collaboration with the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) was to launch an SME toolkit under the Rural Enterprises Project of the ministry, to assist entrepreneurs tackle the challenges in their business. "This manual would assist entrepreneurs in this sector to navigate their way through the challenges of starting, managing and dealing with the legal environment of doing business in Ghana, as well as the regulatory issues they need to consider," she said.

Ms Tetteh said the ministry had developed a Consumer Protection Policy to ensure the protection and welfare of consumers. She expressed the hope that cabinet would approve the policy to enable the Ministry to embark on an extensive programme of public education to inform producers, manufacturers and importers of their obligations to consumers.

Speaking on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), Ms Tetteh said the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had drawn an Economic Partnership Agreement Development Programme with inputs from member states, and had presented it to the European Commission for consideration.

She explained that the draft programme was aimed at supporting ECOWAS economies to adjust to changes resulting from the implementation of the EPA, as well as to help businesses in the region to tackle supply side-constraints. "In the event that Ghana does complete negotiations in October this year, the EPA Development Programme would be signed together with the ECOWAS EPA on trade in goods," she said. 22 July 09