President Akufo-Addo has disclosed plans by the government to establish a vehicle financing scheme aimed at supporting the purchase of locally assembled vehicles.

This move, according to the President, is to reduce both the importation of vehicles and the heavy reliance on second-hand vehicles.

Nana Akufo-Addo was speaking at the unveiling ceremony of Japan Motors’ state of the art assembling plant for its Nissan Navara vehicle at Tema on Thursday.

President Akufo-Addo, who commissioned the assembling plant, noted the presence of the facility comes to support the industrial transformation agenda to diversify the economy.

“The rolling out of this policy will lead to harnessing the capacity of local value chained actors particularly technicians, operating in the Suame Magazine, Abossey Okai and others across the country to play critical role in component manufacturing and supply development program. We will continue to design innovative policies to ensure the sustainability of the industry, including developing a vehicle financing scheme aimed at supporting the purchase of locally assembled vehicles,” assured.

Ghana had earlier signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Nissan Group of Africa for the establishment of an automotive manufacturing industry in Ghana, which will make Ghana the hub for sales and marketing of Nissan in West Africa.

The launch of the Nissan Navara assembling plant is the fourth of such in Ghana after Volkswagen, Kantanka and Toyota.

The new state-of-the-art assembly plant has the total production capacity of 11,593 units per shift, and is said to have the capacity to assemble 5,000 new vehicles annually.

Minister for Trade and Industry, Alan Kyerematen is optimistic that the setting up of assembling plants in Ghana is going to attract more foreign direct investment and curb the use of foreign currencies to import second-hand vehicles.

On his part, Managing Director of Japan Motors, Salem Kalmoni said he hoped that the government would now fully implement the Ghana Automotive Development Policy (GADP), after having identified vehicle assembling and automotive component manufacturing as a strategic anchor industry for its Ten Point Plan for Ghana’s industrial development.

“We know that this assembly plant today is a watershed for the implementation of this policy. There are many more international Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) watching very carefully today, waiting for their opportunity to invest in our country, if the GADP is fully implemented as planned,” he requested.