President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has commissioned phase one of the B5 Plus Steel Plant, an enterprise under the Government’s One-District-One-Factory Initiative (1D1F).

Located within the Ningo-Prampram district, the 80-million-dollar factory, with an installed production capacity of 250,000 tons took 2 and half years to complete and is expected to produce different qualities of metal and steel products.

The second phase of the project will see an additional investment of 70 million dollars with an installed capacity of 300,000 tons of mixed steel products.

The Minister of Trade and Industry, Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, said such projects will go a long way to produce import substitution and retain money in Ghana.

“In this country, every year, we import over 4 Billion Ghana Cedis worth of iron and steel products. It is the second leading import in Ghana after automobiles and vehicles. So, any effort to promote import substitution and develop local productive capacity to replace imports is worth celebrating,” the Trade Minister said.

B5 Plus CEO, Mukesh Thakwani urged government to continue to set in place, deliberate policies that would allow the company serve the local market well and recover its investments.

“Most importantly we request the government to impose an across-the-board ban on certain finished imported products like our dear neighbors Nigeria, Gabon and Ivory Coast have already done.”

The President said the plant is a concrete manifestation of the new paradigm of economic development vigorously pursued by government since 2017.

He revealed that the 1D1F initiative has created jobs for some 139,000 people countrywide and is expected to employ an additional 285,000 more Ghanaians.

Nana Akufo Addo said, “this policy has the potential to absorb many more young graduates to well paying sustainable jobs within their district, municipal, or metropolitan areas.”