Business News of Sunday, 13 March 2005

Source: GNA

Investors urged to invest more in the oil industry

Kumasi, March 13, GNA - An urgent appeal has been made to foreign investors not to concentrate solely on the mining sector, but also consider investing in the exploration and development of the oil sector. Mr. Opoku-Agyemang Prempeh, Managing Director of Lakayana Company, General Contractors and an Engineering firm, said even though the oil sector had the tendency to speed up development of the country's economy, most investors shun away from it in favour of mineral prospecting.

Mr. Prempeh made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi at the weekend. "Even though minerals contribute significantly to growth of the Ghanaian economy, oil has a multiplicity of benefits and the capacity to redeem the nation from its predicaments", he added. Mr. Prempeh said government should strive at all cost to import technology that could be used to convert vegetable and plant materials into fuel.

He was convinced that the country had a lot of vegetable and plant materials that could be developed and converted into fuel, saying, "what was left is the technology and political will".