The report of the drama surrounding the approval or otherwise of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of Government took a new turn yesterday as Parliament descended into chaos, forcing the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu, to suspend the House abruptly is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Thursday.
The Graphic says that the Ghana Free Zones Authority (GFZA) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry are in the process of developing three separate industrial cities in the country to boost the government’s industrialisation agenda.
Known as the Special Economic Zones Project, the industrial cities are being developed in the Ashanti, Western and Eastern regions to serve as additional industrial hubs that could facilitate the processing of natural resources into value-added goods for the export market.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GFZA, Mr Michael Oquaye Jnr, made this known at the sixth annual meeting of the Africa Economic Zones Organisation (AEZO) in Accra last Friday.
The meeting, held in person and virtually via the Zoom platform, was on the theme: ‘Connecting African Special Economic Zones to Global Value Chains in the era of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)’.
It brought together leaders of the economic zones agencies of member states to deliberate on how to utilise the benefits of the biggest trading bloc in the world for rapid economic development in Africa.
Mr Oquaye said already an environmental and social impact assessment had been initiated on the land secured for the projects under the Ghana Economic Transformation agenda, while the Ministry of Trade and Industry was developing a policy framework and regulatory institutional mechanisms for special economic zones.
The policy was expected to position the private sector to take advantage of special economic zones within the expanded regional market under AfCFTA, as well as other market integration frameworks, he said.
“It is our hope that when the policy is developed by 2022, it will help guide our quest for a successful special economic zone in the country,” he said.
The newspaper reports that Ghana has detected its first case of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye who announced this Wednesday in Accra said the first case was discovered on Sunday, November 21, 2021, in a Nigerian traveller through sequencing. Another case was recorded in a traveller from South Africa.
“The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 disease has been found at the Kotoka International Airport,” Dr Kuma-Aboagye said at an event organised today to announce the start of mass COVID-19 vaccinations in the country.
“The good thing is that in the community test done so far, we have not seen any Omicron within the community of Ghana, but the danger is that if someone has the Omicron, and it is incubating, it will not be found at the airport”.
He added that so far, no case of the new Omicron variant has been recorded in the “community of Ghana”.
Dr Kumah-Aboagye also assured that the country will strengthen its strategies at the airport to prevent the importation of the illness.
“For Christmas, we are going to ensure that to prevent importation, the strategies at the airport which have served us a lot will continue and be strengthened to ensure that people are tested before they leave and when they arrive to reduce the importation (of COVID-19),” he said.
“We are going to monitor all our ports of entry, we are increasing our surveillance across the country to ensure that cases are followed up. We are also going to identify countries of concern so that even when they arrive and are negative, we have a different protocol on how to observe them…”.
GIK/APA