The Chairman of the Advisory Board on the President's Special Initiative (PSI), Mac Peter Manu says the PSI on salt was to develop an internationally competitive salt industry that would be a lead export earner and pillar of socio-economic growth.

"PSI on salt is meant to systematically address the constraints identified and quickly transform the industry into an internationally competitive one with an enhanced capacity for the production of salt particularly for the export market", he said.

Mr Manu said this would involve measures to enhance capacity to ensure the efficient utilisation of resources for the production of salt and allied products for both domestic and export markets.

He was addressing participants attending a five-day training workshop on modern salt production at Prampram in the Greater-Accra Region. It is on the theme: " Modernising Salt Production in Ghana through Solar Evaporation."

The workshop would offer participants the opportunity to learn modern methods of mining salt, cross fertilization of ideas, transfer of skill and technology and expose them to salt production methods.

Mr Manu said Ghana's potential for commercial salt production was estimated between two to three million tonnes a year, yet actual production was stagnated around an average 150,000 tonnes annually. “This is due to the use of obsolete technology, lack of capital, weak production infrastructure, poor production methods and technical know-how facing the industry", he said.

Mr Manu said the industry was therefore, characterised with inefficient production methods and high cost of production that rendered the whole business internationally uncompetitive.

He said although the initial thrust of the project was on the development and expansion of salt base in Ghana, the medium to long-term objective was to use the expanded base for the development of a viable marine-based chloro-alkali chemical salt.

Mr Manu said some critical areas to the project would involve how to streamline land acquisition and licensing procedures to ensure easy accessibility and enhance land tenure security. " It will also include sourcing the state-of-the-art technology from major salt producing countries and inventory of salt mining resources and the creation of land bank for salt production", he added.

Mr Albert Opoku, Plant Manager of Ningo Salt Limited said the area was well poised for salt production on a large scale but due to lack of infrastructure they could not produce to meet the local demand.

He therefore, appealed to government to invest in the provision of the needed infrastructure to boost the production base for both local markets and export.