Over 50,000 jobs created under 1D1F project – Ken Ofori-Atta

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has disclosed that a total of fifty-three thousand (53,000) jobs have been created under the government’s flagship One District, One Factory (1D1F) programme.

Giving the breakdown at 2019 budget review presented to Parliament on Monday, Mr. Ofori-Atta said the 1D1F project had created 10,753 direct jobs and 43,094 indirect jobs.

Ofori-Atta said, “Currently, 181 projects are at their various stages of implementation spread over 110 districts across the 16 regions of the country. As at mid-year, 57 projects were in operation providing 10,753 direct jobs and 43,094 indirect jobs.”

According to him, an additional 33 projects, financed by local Partner Financial Institutions (PFIs), will commence operation by December 2019.

The Minister further revealed a total of GH¢430.7 million has been mobilised from local financial institutions to support the 1D1F project.

He mentioned that government has also secured funding to commence the construction of 56 small scale processing facilities and five common user processing facilities for organised farmer groups by the end of this year.

According to Ken Ofori Atta government is collaborating with the private sector to facilitate the establishment of a number of modern Industrial Parks and Special Economic Zones (SEZ).

“The following parks are currently under development; the Dawa Industrial Park at Dawa on the Accra–Aflao Highway currently has 2,000 acres fully developed out of 22,000 acres available land and the West Park Industrial Estate at Shama in the Western Region is constructing onsite infrastructure for its 400-acre industrial park,” he observed.

He assured Ghanaians that government is aggressively pursuing an industrialization agenda with the objective of widening opportunities for job creation and expanding the economy through accelerated technology-based manufacturing and aggressive export promotion.