Government’s flagship program, one district, one factory is not seeing day light because the ministry charged with the responsibility of implementing the program lacks funds to carry out the programme, the minority has said.
Speaking during the approval of the budget estimate for the ministry of Trades and Industry, acting ranking member for the committee on Trades and Industry Yusif Sulemana said government has only been interested in commissioning existing factories and not focused on building new factories in every district as promised.
He was however surprised to note that, out of the GH¢636 million allocated for the program in 2018, only a million was released.
“I was surprised to hear that no disbursements were made for the Minister to be able to implement this project. That’s why we have come to realize that the factories that are being commissioned everywhere are existing factories that are being put under the one district, one factory,” he said.
He added: “The truth of the matter is that there are no new factories being established and this is a fact that no monies have been disbursed to the Minister to able to roll out this important programme.”
Jumping to the defence of the ministry, Trade Minister Alan Kyeremateng said “in principle, we have various sources of funding to support one district, one factory interventions” and the programme enterprises are owned by the private sector business promoters.
“Essentially, the capitalization of these enterprises come from the business promoters,” he said adding that “what the government is doing is to facilitate access to additional financing, to leverage additional financing from financial institutions to complement the equities of business promoters.”
