Yaw Amoateng Afriyie, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Investment and Promotion Centre (GIPC), says the country’s proximity gives it a competitive advantage to leverage in trade services across the world.

“Ghana is well positioned with excellent proximity and connectivity to key markets in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Indian sub-continent, North and Latin America, and the Caribbean,” he stated.

Mr. Afriyie was speaking at a CEO’s breakfast meeting organized by GIPC on the theme “Revitalizing Ghana’s supply chain: maximizing logistics efficiency, for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) growth”.

He said Kotoka International Airport had been ranked the best airport for three consecutive years. Africa’s 2–5 million passenger category presents many efficient freight forwarding and logistical opportunities for the country.

He added that the Tema and Takoradi Ports were vital for import and exportation for the oil and gas industries, mining logistics, agriculture, forestry, e-commerce, processing, and infrastructure.

They are also strategic for ECOWAS, which has a market of approximately 370 million people and has the potential to serve 1.4 billion people in AfCFTA with a combined growing GDP of 3.4 trillion dollars (about $10,000 per person in the US).

Mr. Afriyie explained that the access points reinforced Ghana’s position as a hub for logistics in the sub-continents, adding that the governments of Ghana recognized the interdependence of rail and road and the proliferation of technology as essential tools in perusing aggressive export and investment-led recovery in Ghana.

He said Ghana was the first country to export through AfCFTA in 2021, adding that this was noteworthy as the country sought markets for SMEs, which contributed about 70 percent to the GDP.

He added that GIPC supported ACFTA’s quest to eliminate import duties and reduce non-tariff barriers over time.

He said according to the World Investment Report 2022, global direct investment stood at 1.6 trillion dollars (about $4,900 per person in the US) in 2021, which was expected to grow in the medium term, adding that Africa’s share of the total global inward investment stood at US$ 83 billion as compared to 29 billion in 2020, accounting for 5.2 percent of global direct investment.

He added that flows to Ghana that year rose from 39 percent to 2.6 billion dollars owing to projects in the extractive industries supported by efficient supply chains, adding that there was more room for improvement in the country and the African continent.

He urged companies to liaise with the government to enhance capabilities, innovative technologies, and reliable customer processes supported by soft infrastructure.

Mr. Prince Arkutu, the CEO of Apex Shipping and Commercial Company, who gave the keynote address, said the country needed courage in building an ecosystem that would support business and propel growth.

He added that to be able to unlock the potential in the supply chain system, every company needed to re-analyze the roles they were playing.

He explained that there was also a need for collaboration between the public and private sectors to build bigger capacity and suggested that the government needed to provide the infrastructure needs, technology, and access to finance to make the supply chain sector effective and efficient.

Mr. Edward Bagyiri, Chief Revenue Officer, Import and Export Unit, Ghana Revenue Authority, Custom Division, said the roles the division played in maximizing coordination included automation, which eliminated the human factor in the process due to the documentation of all their processes, and the continuous improvement of the division as a way of helping improve the sector.