Fidelity Bank Holds Export Summit In Kumasi

Exporters in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions have benefitted from an Export summit organized by Fidelity Bank

in collaboration with the Ghana Export Promotion Authority.

The Export Summit was a follow up to the Graphic-Fidelity Breakfast Meeting held earlier this month on the theme “Maximizing the Value of Exports to Improve Ghana’s Trade Balance”.

The Director of Corporate Banking for Local and Multinational Corporates at Fidelity Bank, Mr. Anthony Benin, in his welcome address highlighted that the Summit was to provide the platform for exporters in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions to come together and deliberate with stakeholders to table the challenges they are faced with.

“This summit is expected to build your capacity to enable you identify the right financial products to support and grow your businesses. It further seeks to draw awareness and educate exporters on the new banking regulations from the Bank of Ghana and also its impact on your business”.

The Chief Executive of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority, Mr. Gideon Quarcoo in his presentation urged Exporters to adhere to standardization and quality principles so as to ensure that their exported goods meet international requirements.

He bemoaned that fact that the Country spends huge amount of money importing basic things such as rice, fish, chicken and  toothpick which are produced right here in Ghana and called for behavioural change towards made in Ghana goods. He encouraged Ghanaians to “wear and eat Ghana” to reduce our import and rather increase our export to achieve trade balance.

Mr. Quarcoo explained that the total revenue from Non-Traditional Export (NTE) at the end of 2013 stood at US$2.436 billion adding that for Ghana to achieve an increase in NTE revenues to US$ 5billion by 2017, which is the goal of the National Export strategy, there must be concerted efforts from all stakeholders.

The Participants were also introduced to the Fidelity Export Bonus Account which has been specifically designed to reduce transactional costs for exporters.