Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice President has revealed the planning of government to make Ghana a pharmaceutical hub in the West African sub-region.
According to him, government is working very hard and doing dialogue with stakeholders and other foreign partners to come up with interventions that would position the country’s pharmaceutical industry at the centre in the ECOWAS community.
He said that stakeholder will come up with interventions such as exempting selected imported pharmaceutical products from Value Added Tax (VAT) and the spreading out of the list of raw materials exempted from VAT to put up additional inputs to hold up the local pharmaceutical manufacturing industry are being worked out.
Additionally, he added that Exim Bank Ghana has also extended extra funds to some local pharmaceutical companies to put up some new plants and to bring the rank of their production to international quality standards.
The vice president highlighted that these are the interventions which are contributing positively to the development of the sector.
Dr. Bawumia made this declaration when he addressed the 83rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH) at Ho Technical University, Volta Region.
The vice president also explained that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Trade and Industry are showing interest to involve in removing trade barriers and promoting Ghana’s pharmaceutical industry and its products within the ECOWAS region.
He stressed that to making these interventions valuable and creates wealth, government would work with appropriate financial institutions to fund local industries to facilitate them to compete internationally and ensure that at least sixty per cent of medicines consume
