Ghanaian president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Monday said his government was strategizing to increase export volumes under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) from 29 million U.S. dollars in 2016 to 500 million dollars by 2020.
He said the government was working to institute measures to ensure the country took full advantage of the US market through the AGOA initiative.
“We aim at increasing our export volumes under AGOA to 500 million dollars in 2020, which will create in its wake hundreds of thousands of jobs. The target is ambitious, but certainly achievable,” he said, while launching the expansion project of Dignity Do-The-Right-Thing (DTRT) Apparel in Accra.
Dignity DTRT is a Ghanaian-American joint venture initiative currently employing some 1,600 people, and is set to export 30 million dollars worth of clothing to the US by 2018.
The AGOA is a preferential market access system given to specific countries in Africa and the Caribbean by the United States.
Under the trade agreement, most of Sub Saharan African countries are allowed to export over 6,000 products duty-free to the U.S. market.
Akufo-Addo described the apparel project as being consistent with his government’s vision to make Ghana an industrial hub in West Africa and drive its socio-economic development.
