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20 Exhibitors attend China Investment Fair

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Mr Gideon Kwame Boye Quarcoo, has stated that Ghana needs to work hard to increase its export volumes in order  to reap more foreign exchange for its development programmes.

But that, according to him, should be done through value addition and agro-processing to enable the country’s goods to command higher prices in the world market.

“Agro-processing technologies are key for us to capture our fair share of the world market and we must strive to achieve this if we want to fairly balance the volume of trade between us and our trading partners”, he stated.

Mr Quacoe stated these in an interview with the Daily Graphic during the just-ended China International Fair for Investment and Trade (CIFIT) in Xiamen, the capital of  Fujian Province.

The four-day fair was China’s international investment promotion event aimed at facilitating bilateral investments.

It showcased the investment environments, policies, projects and corporate products in all the provinces of China and also attracted investment promotion agencies from all areas of the country.

This year, more than 100 countries, including Ghana, participated in the trade exhibition.

Twenty exhibitors from Ghana took part in the fair with a wide range of made-in-Ghana products, including, woodcrafts, baskets, hats, body creams, native sandals, alata samina (soap), Ghanaian instruments and traditional medicinal products.

Packaging

Mr Quarcoo also dwelt on the importance of  packaging and stated that there was the need for made-in-Ghana products to be well-packaged to compete favourably on the international market.

 He stated that the GEPA would collaborate with its foreign partners, including China, to facilitate the training of Ghanaian exporters to be skilled in the modern ways of packaging.

There is also the issue of standardisation, and the GEPA, according to Mr Quarcoo, would not relent in its efforts to ensure that Ghanaian goods met the required international standards before they were exported.

Objectives

Touching on the  large number of Ghanaian exhibitors at the fair, the Deputy Director of GEPA in charge of Research and Trade, Mrs Agnes Gifty Adjei-Sam, said the exhibitors were not only in China to sell their products but also to look for distributors.

They were also in China to look for machinery to enable them to improve on their products, she stated, explaining that it was through such technology transfer that  Ghanaian exporters could compete favourably with their foreign counterparts.

She therefore advised Ghanaians who had the chance to exhibit their products in such international fairs to be very vigilant and ensure that they properly understood any agreement they entered into before appending their signatures.

 

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