President John Dramani Mahama broke ground for commencement of work on a €60-million cement plant in the Tema Free Zone enclave in the Greater-Accra Region.
The project, which is being constructed by CIMAF and ADDOHA PROJECTS in Ghana, has a production capacity of one million tonnes, and would provide 200 direct and 1,000 indirect jobs to Ghanaians.
Apart from this project, ADDOHA Ghana Limited has also signed a memorandum of understanding with government to construct 10,000 social housing units over seven years.
President Mahama also encouraged CIMAF and other cement manufacturing companies to build fully integrated processing plants that would enable them to avoid importing some of their ingredients that results in high cost of production.
He said in a bid to make Ghana the best destination of investment on the continent, government had embarked on an expansion programme at the Tema Port, to accommodate more businesses.
President Mahama appealed to investors to partner government under the Private Public Partnership programme, that would create more jobs and wealth for Ghanaians in the coming years.
The partnership, he said, would concentrate on the provision of a dry dock and maintenance and servicing centres that would attract foreign ships into the country and beyond.
Alhaji Haruna Iddrisu, Minister for Trade and Industry, warned that government would not spare cement manufacturers and retailers who arbitrarily increased the prices of the commodity to the disadvantage of buyers.
He said there seemed to be a collusion between manufacturers and retailers, which he described as ‘unfair and unacceptable’ to developers.
The Trade Minister said government would soon introduce a competition law that would help regulate the sale of the product to investors and ordinary individual developers in the country.
