ACCRA: Ghana’s total export to Italy in 2013 amounted to 751 million dollars dominated by petroleum oils, cocoa beans and tuna, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Minister of Trade and Industry has said.
He said while the country ran a large trade deficit with Italy from 2000 to 2010, the trend reversed in 2011 with Ghana reporting a significant trade surplus against Italy in 2011 and 2012, as a result of exports of petroleum oils.
Dr Spio-Garbrah noted that Italy is Ghana’s 18th largest supplier of imports, supplying 1.2 per cent of Ghana’s imports worth 257 million dollars in 2012 and Ghana’s 2nd largest export destination, accounting for 12.4 per cent of exports worth 976 million dollars in 2012.
He said this at the launch of Milan Expo 2015 in Accra to intensify bilateral, economic, scientific and cultural partnerships with countries around the globe on the theme: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.”
The Milan Expo intends to address the universal and complex theme of nutrition from an environment, historical, cultural, anthropological, medical, technical, scientific and economic point of view.
The Expo is designed on a cluster model which represents one of the innovative elements and is organised into six specific food chains-coffee, cacao, spices, fruit and legumes, cereals and tubers.
Dr Spio-Garbrah said Italy is the eighth largest economy in the World with a well-diversified export sector and expressed optimism that Ghana could learn lessons from Italy to increase its non-traditional export earnings to five billion dollars by 2018 through the implementation of the National Export Strategy.
He said the numerous Italian companies in the country lend credence to the cordial relationships that exist between both countries, adding that a total of 43 Italian projects were registered by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre from 1994 to 2012.
