Ghana inspired by China's development model- President

Accra, Sept. 4, - Ghana is inspired by China's development model and would replicate that system to further Ghana's progress and prosperity, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said.

He said China's economic success over the past three decades, based largely on its economic policies and the manner of their implementation, had resulted in immense changes in Chinese society, and this ought to be duplicated in Ghana to boost its development imperatives.

Addressing the roundtable meeting of Presidents and Heads of State at the third Summit of the Forum on China Africa Co-operation (FOCAC), in Beijing, China on Tuesday, the President noted that socialist policies and reforms had resulted in one of the world's biggest economic booms.

“we are witnessing, today, how China’s aggressive development of the market economy, on the wheels of industrialisation, in this new era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, has lifted some half a billion people out of poverty, creating the world's largest middle class in the process.”

“Ghana is inspired by this model, and is trying to replicate same, through, inter alia, our industrialisation policy of "1-District-1-Factory”, and an increase in agricultural productivity through the programme for ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’,” the President made known.

President Akufo-Addo commended Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the holding of the Summit and noted that China and Africa, recognized that a win-win situation for their respective peoples is the desired outcome.

With China being Ghana’s largest trading partner, and, indeed, for the majority of countries in Africa, the President noted that the continent was grateful for the financial and technical support, financial and technical, given to African countries over the years, and implementation of the commitments made by China at recent FOCAC Summits, which have benefitted the peoples of Africa considerably.

“We believe that the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, proposed by President Xi Jinping, will further intensify Chinese commitment to Africa’s development.

Last night’s message from President Xi, in his opening statement at this Summit, involving the allocation of a comprehensive package of support for Africa’s development, including a $60 billion fund, is a powerful reinforcement of that commitment,” he said.  

The President held that with the projection by the World Bank that six of the world's ten fastest growing economies this year, including Ghana’s, are in Africa,  and with the Continent in possession of nearly 30 percent of the earth's remaining mineral resources, “I am glad that China is, most certainly, not ignoring our continent.'

He stressed that his Government had resolved to build a value-added, industrialised economy with a modernised agriculture, trading in the global marketplace on the basis of things it made, and charted its own self-reliant, independent path within the world economic order.

“We believe that effective co-operation with China will help us attain this goal. Indeed, we want our relations with China to be characterised by an increase in trade and investment co-operation, and not by the export and import of raw materials,” he said.

This, he believed, was the way to develop healthy relations between Ghana and China, and, thereby, put Ghana at the high end of the value chain, and create jobs for the teeming masses of Ghanaians, particularly the youth.

President Akufo-Addo told his colleague leaders that “we are determined that this new era of Ghana-China, and Africa-China relations will reaffirm the principles of solidarity, mutual trust and respect, which have anchored those relations, and which will assist us deliver progress and prosperity for our peoples.”

GNA