The Chief Executive Officer of the Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD) in the Republic of Ghana, Senyo Hosi is urging businesses in the West African nation to learn from the impact of coronavirus pandemic and position themselves and take advantage of future eventualities.
According to him, if businesses in the West African nation had been well prepared, they could have taken advantage of the demand for hand sanitisers in the United States and become exporter of the product and raked in foreign exchange.
The outbreak of the coronavirus, which has killed over 200,000,000 globally with the U.S, alone, recording 58,900 deaths, has resulted in the high demand for hand sanitisers.
The situation has compelled the U.S oil and gas firm, ExxonMobil to configure its refinery at Louisiana to start producing sanitisers for donation to fight the Covid-19.
Contributing to a discussion on the impact of the coronavirus on businesses and opportunities coronavirus presents, on ‘AM Show’ on Joy News Channel, in Ghana, Senyo Hosi noted that countries like Vietnam and Thailand have established themselves as rice exporters while India is noted for medicine export globally.
He, however, said the same cannot be said for Ghana and many other African countries.
He noted that Ghana is heavily dependent on imports and called for a paradigm shift by revolutionising the agricultural sector so that some of the imported products can be home grown.
Senyo Hosi was of the firm believe that Ghana, and for that matter, Africa needs to start producing more things themselves instead of depending on imports.
“Take sanitisers for example: A lot of demand is coming from the U.S. If we had positioned ourselves and possibly shut our borders earlier, we would have become global exporter of sanitisers and other PPE,” he said.
He underscored the need for the government to make sure that companies which have been supported to produce sanitisers and other PPE due to the outbreak of coronavirus become sustainable and not allowed to fade away after containment of the situation.
“Are we going to be able to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) like we currently have some companies doing? What sustainable interventions are we going to have from government to make sure that these people will not just go beyond this immediate coronavirus problem and probably have these business thrive over 30 years or more?
Source: www.energynewsafrica.com