The Western Regional Minister, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, has urged businesses to learn new trends and models that will enable them to become competitive in the global market.
He said this, coupled with capacity-building, will help businesses to compete effectively with others from elsewhere, maximise trade inflows, shore up opportunities, and support economic growth.
“We have reached a point where we need to scale up our region’s competitiveness through capacity-building. There should be comprehensive measures to scale up production at reduced costs,” he stressed.
The Regional Minister spoke at the 4th edition of the Paa Grant Medals for Business Excellence Award ceremony in Takoradi. It was on the theme ‘the Potential for Trade and Industries for Sustainable Development’.
The event served as a platform to honour distinguished companies and businessmen and women in the Western Region. It also served as an avenue for individual entrepreneurs to establish relationships among industry players.
The minister said: “We strategically selected the month of August to honour businesses that have excelled and to also forcefully trumpet the good works of patriots, such as Paa Grant and the legendary Jacob Wilson Sey. These two great sons of the Western Region sacrificed their ideas, beliefs and cash to position Ghana well. What they did way before independence using their hard-earned cash has served Ghana well. It is our hope that we – of today – will learn from their actions and sacrifice”.
The Regional Minister commended Star Ghana Foundation for sustaining the awards for the past two years to include conversations that are intended to discuss new trends in business and to offer solutions to the never-ending challenges of businesses and private sector endeavours.
In 2019, he said the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) embarked on a journey to focus on ways that will make the private sector the new pathway to generate growth in business in the region.
“We believed that the best efforts of the government can only be complemented better and more effectively only by the private sector,” he noted.
He said there is a need to promote and patronise locally-manufactured products to grow the local economy.
