Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

With Africa poised to be the next glob­al eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, lo­cal busi­ness­men are be­ing en­cour­aged to ex­plore busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in Ghana.

The call came from chief ex­ec­u­tive of Ghana In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Cen­tre CEO, Regi­nald Yofi Grant, and In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor for Caribbean Robert Le Hunte.

Grant said in Ghana alone, there was a po­ten­tial cus­tomer pool of 32 mil­lion and more than 300 mil­lion in West Africa.

Le Hunte point­ed out that the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor took to ben­e­fit from low­er en­er­gy prices in Ghana com­pared to our re­gion­al coun­ter­parts.

“The en­cour­age­ment for Trinidad busi­ness peo­ple is to see the po­ten­tial of the mar­ket and to go there and ex­plore the mar­ket. If you are a man­u­fac­tur­er, you want to be part of a mar­ket that is the largest con­sumer mar­ket. What Ghana has as you have been hear­ing is a lot of raw ma­te­ri­als: a lot of prod­ucts, ba­nanas, pineap­ple, man­goes, cashews, shea but­ter, av­o­ca­do, palm oil, just to name a few. What Trinidad has; we have ex­per­tise in pack­ag­ing,” said Le Hunte.

“What Ghana is look­ing for is part­ner­ship, syn­er­gies with places that have fa­mil­iar­i­ties with the di­as­po­ra. That’s what they want, they want to lever­age our man­u­fac­tur­ing skills. We want to lever­age their mar­ket. To me that speaks to a mar­riage made in heav­en,” he added.

Grant said there is greater com­mon­al­i­ty be­tween the two coun­tries than dif­fer­ences and that makes for greater ac­com­mo­da­tion for busi­ness.

“We are more alike in many more ways than we are dif­fer­ent. I be­lieve that you all do have a nat­ur­al affin­i­ty to the African con­ti­nent, both cul­tur­al­ly, both be­hav­ioral­ly, look at the food, we eat al­most the same things. Look at the mu­sic. The beats or com­mon beats are the same, you know. So cul­tur­al­ly, we are very much in sync and in tune that you tell us that when there are op­por­tu­ni­ties, it is just as good for you to have those same op­por­tu­ni­ties as any­body else and if not more.”

Trade mis­sions ahead

The men said to show the se­ri­ous­ness of the op­por­tu­ni­ty, they met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Trade, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, Cham­ber of Com­merce, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and In­vestTT last Thurs­day.

Com­ing out of that will be a bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ment treaty which, hope­ful­ly, will be fol­lowed by two mis­sions to Ghana, one, a cul­tur­al mis­sion in De­cem­ber and the oth­er, a trade mis­sion in March.

“We are work­ing on a bi­lat­er­al in­vest­ment treaty to de­fine the pa­ra­me­ters or the pro­to­cols that will guide the way we do busi­ness as well as a tax avoid­ance treaty. Those will lay the ground rules on which we can in­ter­act or do busi­ness. But be­yond that, is a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty, re­al in­ter­est that I’ve seen to­day from some man­u­fac­tur­ers, traders and dis­trib­u­tors,” Grant said.

The reignit­ed talk of trade deals be­tween the two coun­tries came dur­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion Day vis­it of Ashan­ti King Otum­fuo Os­ei Tu­tu II, who re­turned to Ghana along with his del­e­ga­tion yes­ter­day.

In 2007, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, at the eighth Or­di­nary Ses­sion of the African Union Con­fer­ence in Ad­dis Aba­ba, Ethiopia, spoke of bridg­ing a gap be­tween the two coun­tries with T&T as­sist­ing in de­vel­op­ing its nat­ur­al gas econ­o­my.

This ‘Africa Ini­tia­tive’—as it came to be called—prompt­ed a se­ries of ex­changes, study tours and del­e­ga­tion vis­its over the next decade, as those West African na­tions sought to learn from the T&T ex­pe­ri­ence.

This dream ma­te­ri­alised in 2022, six years af­ter Man­ning’s death. State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) pro­duced a crit­i­cal piece of equip­ment, the Tako­ra­di Dis­tri­b­u­tion Sta­tion (TDS) in Ghana. It was the first time such a project was con­ceived and ex­e­cut­ed vir­tu­al­ly, and it marked NGC’s first steps in­to sell­ing tech­ni­cal ser­vices. The project start­ed in De­cem­ber 2020, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, when the coun­try’s bor­ders were closed.

Asked about the 15-year-de­lay and what as­sur­ances can be giv­en to busi­ness­men that there will not be a re­peat, both men said the de­lay was a mat­ter of pol­i­tics.

Le Hunte, who was part of the team to es­tab­lish Re­pub­lic Bank in Ghana, said the en­er­gy deal be­tween West African states and T&T was gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment deal­ings while this ven­ture re­lies on the pri­vate sec­tor tak­ing charge.

Le Hunte said Re­pub­lic Bank’s ven­ture in­to the Ghana­ian mar­ket was the largest in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try of any en­ti­ty from the di­as­po­ra. He said af­ter the bank vis­it­ed the coun­try in 2010 and did its re­search, with­in two years the bank was up and run­ning. That two-year pe­ri­od, he said, was tes­ta­ment to the ease at which busi­ness can be done in the coun­try, all that is need­ed is for en­tre­pre­neur­ial ex­plo­ration.

Trans­port lim­i­ta­tion

In 2010, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley vis­it­ed Ghana on an in­vi­ta­tion by Ghana­ian Pres­i­dent Nana Ad­do Dankwa Afu­fo-Ad­do for the coun­try’s 63rd in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary. Dur­ing that meet­ing he sought to strength­en ties for trade in agri­cul­ture and en­er­gy.

One of the agri­cul­tur­al trade agree­ments in­volved grow­ing Ghan­ian white yam in T&T.

Le Hunte said the project be­gan and with the pan­dem­ic, there were some hic­cups. He said the sam­ple roots grew well in the test­ed ar­eas and of­fi­cials are now look­ing to ex­pand com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion. The main hic­cup both men agreed was trans­porta­tion.

Af­ter his 2020 vis­it Row­ley said he hoped Ghana Air­ways would re­turn and pro­vide di­rect flights to Port-of-Spain and the Caribbean from Ghana.

Grant said he spent close to 15 hours get­ting to T&T, while a di­rect flight, which is pos­si­ble, would have tak­en six hours. He said a di­rect flight is key to the con­nec­tion and the time has come for the mat­ter to go be­yond dis­cus­sions to re­al­i­ty.

“On the first day (of the vis­it), we had a busi­ness sem­i­nar where we had Caribbean Air­lines rep­re­sent­ed, and we spoke about the pos­si­bil­i­ties and the need to move fur­ther with that be­yond the talk. Africa presents a very in­ter­est­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Caribbean,” he said.

Le Hunte in­ter­ject­ed, call­ing for the pri­vate sec­tor to step up and fa­cil­i­tate di­rect flights rather than re­ly on gov­ern­ments. He said Ghana is the sec­ond largest pro­duc­er of co­coa and is rich in min­er­als and agri­cul­ture, so trans­porta­tion be­tween the re­gion and Ghana is es­sen­tial.

“Right now, there are lim­i­ta­tions be­cause of trans­porta­tion. And ad­mit­ted­ly that is so but that is what makes the mar­ket even more at­trac­tive for peo­ple be­cause of the po­ten­tial. What I am en­cour­ag­ing Trinida­di­an busi­ness­men, is ac­tu­al­ly be­cause of the huge po­ten­tial. It might be a lit­tle bit of an in­con­ve­nience, but it is worth the in­con­ve­nience be­cause of the size of the mar­ket,” he said.

He won­dered why the fo­cus re­mained on the cur­rent mar­ket when there is a whole new fron­tier in Africa.

He said for di­rect trans­port be­tween the two coun­tries, there needs to be traf­fic and called on the pri­vate sec­tor to lead that and not the gov­ern­ment. He added that it will hap­pen as busi­ness­es hap­pen.

As in physics, Le Hunte said, mo­men­tum builds when there is move­ment, and it was time for man­u­fac­tur­ers to look out­side the re­gion. The mar­ket is there to take ad­van­tage of, he said, adding he will make him­self avail­able to help any­one who wants to en­ter the Ghana­ian econ­o­my.

Grant said it is time to reat­tach the um­bil­i­cal cord that was cut some 400 years ago. He iden­ti­fied the di­as­po­ra and the Eu­ro­pean Union as the sixth re­gion of Africa.

“Let us take ad­van­tage of this op­por­tu­ni­ty. His­to­ry has de­nied us a very sig­nif­i­cant part in our mu­tu­al progress. And I think it’s about time that we mit­i­gate against that hap­pen­ing again. The op­por­tu­ni­ties are there, the link­ages are there. We come here with a lot of op­ti­mism, and we be­lieve that we will bridge that gap and it will be to our mu­tu­al ben­e­fit.”