Dodowa (G/R), June 18, GNA - Stakeholders at a workshop on services export have called for the promulgation of a national policy to ensure that implementation was not open to abuse.

The national policy, they said, would also ensure the continuity of the programme irrespective of the government in power. The Private Enterprise Foundation is organising a series of workshops on services export to build consensus on how the current migration of professionals from the country could be formalised and harnessed to enable the country to benefit from it.

The workshop held in Dodowa at the weekend focused on how to export the services of professionals from the health and education sectors.

Dr. Boeh Ocansey, Executive Director, said giving the right framework, the current brain drain could be turned into a gain for both the individual service providers and government.

He said Ghana had immense national advantage from its unique geographic location which conferred on it, a four to five hour working time and language advantage to attract companies from abroad to the country.

This geographic advantage, he said, could be further exploited through the export of transport and logistics services to the landlocked countries in the West African sub-region, through the Tema and Takoradi ports as well as the water and road transport.

Besides the common language advantage could also be more fully exploited in training health care providers for the US and UK markets in respond to demand and opportunities.

Most of the participants were of the view that adequate infrastructure for the training of the professionals needed to be put in place to establish the necessary flow so that the country would not suffer unduly from the export of the services.