Ken Ofori-Atta (middle) flanked by Barbara Oteng Gyasi, Charles
Adu-Boahen and other dignitaries
GOVERNMENT
HAS indicated it will establish the “African Sankofa Savings Account”, a Diasporan
investment and savings fund, to provide investment opportunities for the
Diaspora Community worldwide.
Ken
Ofori–Atta, Minister for Finance, who disclosed this at a press briefing
recently in Accra, said the fund would welcome both high and low income earners
in the Diaspora who wanted to invest in their homeland.
According
to him, that would present another source of revenue for Ghana, where the funds
“would be invested in tourism infrastructure, agriculture value addition, real
estates, music, culture, retirement homes, etc.”
He noted
that the fund had the potential of raising about three billion dollars within a
year or two, with the yield results moving beyond what traditional exports were
earning currently.
He said his
outfit, Bank of Ghana and Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) were
collaborating and working on the modalities, which are expected to be made
public soon.
Minister of
Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Barbara Oteng Gyasi, has lauded the project
saying, one of the seven pillars government has adopted in ‘Beyond the Year of
Return’ was to create investment opportunities for the Diasporans and establish
the Sankofa fund.
Describing
activities which marked the Year of Return as successful, she said the private
sector should desist from needlessly increasing the price of their goods and
services, since that could distract tourists to other destinations.
Some
Africans from the Diaspora who have lived in Ghana for a number of years who
were present at the event lauded the government for the initiative. They said
they were ready to support government initiatives that would bring more Diasporan
investors and visitors back home.
The “Year
of Return, Ghana 2019” is a major landmark and birth-right journey inviting the
Global African family, home and abroad, to mark 400 years of the arrival of the
first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia.
Close to a
million Diasporans are believed to have visited Ghana.
