216 factories' plan is NPP’s ultimate policy – Akomea

The ‘1-District-1-Factory’ plan will be the ultimate policy of the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) 2016 manifesto, Communications Director of the party Nana Akomea has disclosed.

The party’s presidential nominee, Nana Akufo-Addo, has promised to set up a factory in each of the 216 districts in the country, should he win the 2016 elections in December. It is part of his plans to industrialise the economy.

Speaking on Inside Politics, a Class91.3FM current affairs programme, on Monday July 25, Nana Akomea said the policy would be a major step towards transforming Ghana's economy.

“The 1-District-1-Factory is the ultimate policy. This is really what is going to take Ghana out of the woods. We have been in the woods since day one. We have all agreed that the structure of our economy, where we just extract raw materials and export them and then look for two, three, four times the money to import finished goods, that structure will never take us anywhere,” he stated.

“It is like China, now they are changing all of those state factories and getting private sector energy into them and you can see them here. They come here and they are roasting corn. So, there is the need for the factories to add value and also get the private sector to get involved as against the state. The factories that we are going to have, the government’s equity will not be more than 40 per cent and even then, when it starts and it is running, the government will be reducing its equity until it becomes fully privatised,” Nana Akomea added.