Create enabling environment for devt of the north – Speaker

The Speaker of Parliament, Mr Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, on Wednesday opened the 2nd Edition of the Northern Trade Industry and Investment Summit in Tamale in the Northern Region, with a call on the indigenes to create a right environment for economic development.

The five-day summit is on the theme: “Enhancing trade and industry in Northern Ghana through capacity development and strategic investment”.

It is being jointly organised by the Centre For Policy Development (CPD), the University for Development Studies (UDS), Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), Northern Development Authority (NDA), Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Ghana Free Zones Authority (GFZA), Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Northern Regional Coordinating Council (NRCC).

The Speaker said the people of the north could not achieve all that they were doing if they did not have a good environment to execute the policies.

Mr Bagbin said a key objective of the summit was to promote investment in sectors that had potentials to drive economic growth and create employment opportunities for the area.

He said it was imperative to prioritise initiatives to support the growth of small and medium sized enterprises (SMES) to enhance infrastructure development and leverage technology to unlock the regions’ full economic potentials.

“We in the Parliament of Ghana understand that targeted capacity building and strategic investment are the cornerstone of sustainable development,” he said.

He said Parliament remained committed to approving policies to empower businesses in the five regions to enhance the skills of its workforce and attract both domestic and foreign investors.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Development Authority (NDA), Mr Sulley Sambian, said the summit served as a platform to showcase the immense potential of the northern ecological zone and to highlight the opportunities that existed for trade, industry, investment, and the overall improvement of livelihoods.

He stated that the potential for growth was vast and the opportunities were enormous, and that they were committed to fostering an environment to drive industrialisation and attract investments.

The Paramount Chief of Nanton Traditional Area, Naa Bawa Mahamadu V, thanked the organisers for the efforts to hold the summit in northern Ghana, adding that the north had a lot of potentials, and this was the only way they could unlock them to the rest of the world.

FROM YAHAYA NUHU NADAA, TAMALE