The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini has reiterated that Ghana possesses the best potential to establish power-generation plants to feed the West African sub region.
The former Deputy Minister for Energy emphasized that investment in relatively cheap gas-fired power plants through gas that would be made available by the Ghana Gas Company would significantly enhance the competitiveness of products of Ghanaian companies and facilitate the generation of the targeted 5,000KV by 2016 for export to countries in the sub-region.
“The West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) arrangement and existing contractual obligations to Togo, Benin for the supply of power coupled with huge power deficits in many other countries in the sub-region provides immense opportunity for prospective investors to set-up in the power-generation sector” said Alhaji Fuseini.
He made the observation when Mr. Kimihiko Inaba, Executive Director of Japan External Trade organization (JETRO) lead a 2-man South Africa-based team comprising Mr. Yasuto Suzuki, Deputy General Manager, Toshiba and Mr. Nozomu Sasaki, General Manager, Mitsubishi Corporation to pay a courtesy call on him.
The 3-member JETRO delegation is currently in Ghana to explore investment opportunities particularly in the natural resource and power generation sectors in a bid to boost investment of Japanese companies in Ghana.
Touching on Ghana’s excellent investment environment, Alhaji Fuseni assured the team that Ghana offers a stable, secured and the most investor-friendly climate in the West-Africa-sub-region “where the government has demonstrated time without number that it will not expropriate or nationalize the company of any investor”.
According to him, Ghana was looking forward to consolidate on its position as a leading world producer of gold by developing the value-addition sector of the mining industry and stressed that government has also priortise the diversification of the industry through the development of lesser minerals especially base metals.
Expatiating on JETRO operations on the continent, Mr. Kimihiko Inaba explained that the organization which currently has offices in four African countries was interested in establishing in Ghana to scale-up Japanese investment in Ghana especially in the natural resources sector and the nation’s fledging oil and gas industry in the spirit of the new Ghana-Japan relations.
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