Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister for Finance has reiterated government’s commitment in implementing the One District, One Factory (1D1F) initiative, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the focus of the initiative in 2020, was to identify strategic investors to partner Government to establish factories in the districts that lack active business promoters.

“Under this initiative, 232 projects are at various stages of implementation. Among these, 76 are completed and operational, while the remainder, including five medium-size agro-processing factories, are under construction.

“Twelve of these companies received approval for import duty exemptions to the tune of GH¢34million. A total of 154 districts out of the 260 districts are benefiting from the programme,” he added.

Mr Ofori-Atta said this on Thursday when he presented the 2020 Mid-Year Budget Review to Parliament in Accra.

He said the COVID-19 pandemic had presented new opportunities for 1D1F- supported companies in selected sub-sectors of industry.

These include garments and textiles (such as the production of PPEs), processed foods, fruit juices and non-alcoholic beverages, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products.

He said the travel restrictions and disruption of global supply chains have reinforced the need for Ghana to build local productive capacity for import substitution, in line with the vision of His Excellency the President for industrial transformation in every district.

The Minister said on the other hand, COVID-19 restrictions and protocols, including social distancing and workplace contingency measures, have increased the cost of factory operations, while sales revenues have been impacted negatively as a result of cancelled export orders.

“With regards to factories under construction, completion schedules have been affected by the slowdown in labour deployment due to social distancing.

Mr Ofori-Atta noted that for the next six months, construction of 58 small-scale processing factories, under the Enable Youth 1D1F projects, financed by the African Development Bank, would commence across the country.

“It is projected that construction of 36 out of the remaining 1D1F projects will commence in August 2020 in 36 Districts. These projects are being jointly financed by the Government of Ghana and participating financial institutions (PFIs)”.