2020 Trade Fair targets value addition for SMEs

The Ghana Trade Fair Company is collaborating with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) to introduce capacity enhancement initiatives towards getting more local value addition out of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

The partnering institutions are using the impending 2020 edition of the Ghana International Trade Fair as the launching board for the initiative.

The move, according to the annual trade fair’s organizers, has become essential in the sense that for Ghanaian businesses to compete favourably with their multinational counterparts in the business ecosystem, there is the need to adopt value addition initiatives enabled by direly needed innovation in their quest for global acceptance.

This focus came was announced during the official launch of the 24^th edition of the Ghana International Trade Fair in Accra last Wednesday. It is slated for Tamale in the Northern Region from February 27^th through to 8^th March, 2020 at the Aliu Mahama Sports Stadium and 600 exhibitors are expected to participate.

“Partnering with the (Food and Agriculture) Ministry is essential. They will bring their knowledge and add to the platform we [Trade Fair Company] are creating to expose businesses to potential international and local partners”, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Company, Dr. Agnes Adu told the Goldstreet Business during the launch.

The value addition agenda forms part the government’s wider industrialization drive which includes enhancing domestic retail infrastructure, export development programmes, and the development of SMEs, among others.

The Trade Fair Company insists that this year’s edition presents players in the SMEs sector the opportunity to participate and interact in the area of biasness networking to enable them find partners – both local and international – to project their businesses globally, and aims at facilitating the exchange of ideas to create healthy networking relationships.

Instructively, the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Business Development Ministry are already embarking on such value addition initiatives to enable SMEs to better position themselves in the area of product quality and economies of scale in order to more effectively compete with international counterparts.

Dr. Adu further noted that her outfit is committed to provide the needed support including insurance packages and transport services, and is partnering with the majority state owned SIC Insurance Company SIC and the State Transport Company (STC) respectively in this regard.

The decision to hold the trade fair in Tamale is deliberate, with the organizers hoping to expose consumer and business markets in the northern part of the country, and the exhibitors and participants in the event to each other. Importantly, the north is regarded as Ghana’s bread basket because of its strong agricultural production capacity and the state’s commitment to exploiting this is evidenced by the recent upgrade in the capacity of Tamale airport to international status with the aim of using it to export perishable processes and raw agricultural products by air.

“When we are up north, it is not just about going to Tamale. Its really about getting out there, get out of your stalls explore Tamale and tap into the potential in the north”, she stressed.