Presenting President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s maiden budget in Parliament, the Finance Minister said, “this is intended to promote rapid industrialization at the district level driven by strong linkages to agriculture and other natural resource endowments to create job and wealth”.

    He said it also aims at accelerating economic growth and development in rural communities by facilitating the development of commercially viable, export oriented and import competition business activities at the rural level.

     Mr Ofori-Atta explained that, the country's industrial sector faces lack of access to finance, high interest rates, inadequate, and poor quality raw materials for industrial processing, poorly developed domestic trade and an unreliable and expensive power source.

     He said “the goal of government over the medium term is to address these challenges in ways that enable industry to thrive and become a major source of jobs for the youth in Ghana”.

     In order to address the challenges, the Finance Minister said “the Ministry would roll-out its district level component of the National Export Strategy to develop one export commodity in every district.

    He said the Ghana Commodities Exchange (GCX) project would establish a state-of-the-art, transparent, and professional market institutions to create an orderly, transparent and ready market for goods that were produced by farmers in the country this year.