INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN CR CONTRADICT POVERTY LEVEL (PAGE 40, NOV 26)

THE immense investment opportunities in the Central Region contradict its poverty level.
Apart from its comparative advantage in tourism, the agricultural front offers major crops such as oil palm, citrus, pineapple, cassava and fish.
Other potential includes Information Communication Technology, real estate development, salt mining, quarrying, gold mining and education.
The region’s strategic location — proximity to Accra-Tema, Takoradi and Kumasi has made it accessible to the nation’s only two international seaports, the only international airport and the hinterland.
Opening a day’s investment forum in Cape Coast, the Central Regional Minister, Mrs Ama Benyiwa-Doe, said with those potential and many others, it was only logical that the region maximised the benefits of the potential.
The forum, organised by the Central Region Development Commission (CEDECOM), was aimed at providing a platform for a dialogue among public and private sector operators to promote trade and investment in the region.
Dubbed, “Making Central Region the preferred investment destination — prospects and challenges,” the forum was to identify and determine interventions that would stimulate investments in the key sectors of the region’s economy.
It is also aimed at exposing investors and entrepreneurs to various financing options and other support programmes, as well as bringing to the knowledge of investors and entrepreneurs the various incentive packages and investment guarantees made available by the government to prospective investors.
Mrs Benyiwa-Doe, however, stated that the potential had been hampered by challenges such as multiple sale of lands, high cost of utilities, inadequate infrastructure, inadequate human resources, weak market access, high cost of financing and chieftaincy disputes.
She said those challenges were being attended to through a number of interventions, and gave the assurance that the Regional Co-ordinating Council would give the necessary support to enable CEDECOM to play its expected role in the development of the region.
In his welcoming remarks, the acting Executive Director of CEDECOM, Mr Spencer Taylor expressed the hope that the forum would address the challenges to create more jobs, enhanced incomes and the overall improvement in the standard of living of the people in the region.