The Ghana Chamber of Shipping has initiated moves towards ensuring the creation of a local content policy for the Maritime industry in Ghana.

To this end, the Chamber has organised a round table conference to deliberate on issues that will engender the formulation of such a policy.

The Chamber is examining areas including ship building and ship repair, container repair, fisheries, port infrastructure, recreational boating, ship chandling, freight forwarding, ships agency, inland navigation and tourism among others within the framework of Maritime clusters.

Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber Shipping, Dr. Kofi Mbiah addressing delegates at the conference noted that there was the need for the examination of the various blocks that make up the Maritime industry and to see that which readily lends itself to local content policies.

Dr. Mbiah explained that the Chamber was not oblivious of the fact that not all local content policies inure to the benefit of the country, bringing to the fore, the need to examine the particular sector and environment and to fashion out tailor-made homegrown solutions.

“Today as we seek at this round table to begin putting together the building blocks for a potent and pragmatic local content policy that would shape the future of our Maritime industry, we should be guided primarily by our desired objective” he stressed.

Chairman of the Chamber, Mr. Ben Owusu Mensah who doubled as the chairman for the conference underscored the need for the country to institute measures that will make the Maritime industry a blessing to the generality of the Ghanaian people.

He assured that Chamber will play its role as a think tank that will continue to research and feed government with information that will help inform the fashioning of policies that will make the industry a better one for both government and private players.