Throughout 2019, Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia announced the establishment of five new toilet paper factories in the country.
He went on to say that the new enterprises are part of the government’s “one district, one plant” initiative.
On September 26, 2019, Dr. Bawumia toured the Brompton Portfolio’s toilet paper production factory located at the Nsawam Prisons.
The whole story was originally published by Laudbusiness on September 27, 2019.
According to Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawmuia, Ghana now has fourteen (14) indigenous toilet roll manufacturing enterprises operating in the country.
He explained that when the Akufo-Addo administration took office, nine of the enterprises already existed, but five new additions were established under the One District One Factory Program.
On Thursday, September 26th, 2019, he toured the Brompton Portfolio’s toilet paper manufacturing factory located at the Nsawam Prisons in the Eastern Region.
Vice President Bawumia stated to the media that the One District One Factory (1D1F) program was launched as one of the foundations of President Nana Akufo-industrialisation Addo’s agenda.
“We know that we have a heavy reliance on imports in our country, so our import bill is usually quite big, and we prefer to export a lot of our main goods. The President’s objective is for us to shift away from exporting primary commodities and toward manufacturing them, which is the context for the One District One Factory effort.
And if we accomplish so, we’ll be able to save money on scarce foreign currency, expand local industries, and generate jobs. “These are three significant benefits of having one District and one factory,” he stated.
“One of the triumphs in this particular one District, one factory effort is in the area of toilet roll manufacturing in Ghana,” he continued.
“When we came into office there were nine companies existing which dealt with toilet roll manufacturing. Since then in the last two-and-a-half years we’ve added five additional factories. So Ghana’s capacity to produce toilet rolls has increased generally by about 50% which is very significant.
“Given the success of One District One Factory, Government as we stated in our manifesto, is going to use the power of its procurement to support local industries, and it is for this reason you would have heard yesterday that I announced that Cocoa Board and for that matter the Ministry for Agriculture will have to now purchase locally manufactured fertilizer because we have the factories now under 1D1F to produce that fertilizer.
“We don’t have to import it anymore, so the Ministry of Agriculture and Cocoa Board will now have to use all the government procurement of fertilizer, source it locally.
“We are also saying if you look at the 14 manufacturers of toilet roll that we have in Ghana, 1D1F has brought five, we had an existing 9 already, and the capacity of that 14 is able to meet most of our demand for toilet rolls in Ghana, so why import?
“So we are saying from the next procurement cycle, all government institutions – whether it’s the military or the police or the hospitals or the schools, because the taxpayer funds all government institutions – if you’re going to buy toilet roll, all that toilet roll must be bought from local manufacturing companies. So we are using the taxpayer’s money to support our local industries. This will create jobs, will save foreign exchange, will grow the economy and this is the vision of One District One Factory.”
The Vice President continued, “This is the policy going forward. We are going to use our taxpayers’ money to support local manufacturing companies in the context of 1D1F. This is not a new policy, it is something that we had in our manifesto before we came into office but now we have built sufficient capacity in certain areas and therefore we can actualize that particular policy.
“The future is very bright by the grace of God. If we continue to pursue the policies and the vision of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the One District One Factory will become a reality.”
