Let’s leverage on our assets to grow the country’s wealth - Bawumia

Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has highlighted the need for the country to leverage on its vast lands, natural resources and assets as a means of growing its wealth.

Dr Bawumia said this at the first Africa Sovereign Wealth Funds Summit and Launch of the Africa Sovereign Wealth Funds index, organized by the Afrochampions Initiative here in Accra.

The event brought together a number of players in the development finance space, fund managers, lawyers and others.

The Vice-President stated that more must be done to grow the wealth of nations and capitalize on this to boost their sovereign wealth funds.

He said, “We need to leverage the land itself to be able to build the sort of sizeable sovereign wealth funds we can do. We shouldn’t just be looking at government. We have hundreds of billions of dollars locked up in land.”

Dr Bawamia believes that if this is done properly, it will unlock enough funds to carry out a myriad of development projects on the African continent.

The Vice President noted that African countries should be able to leverage on their natural resources to propel growth prospects.

“God has endowed Africa with a lot of natural resources. Underneath that land is a lot of natural resources,” he stated.

Dr Bawumia also believes there should be a shift in the way our natural resources are exploited to finance development. Example, he believes the use of arrangements such as mining concessions do not offer a more rewarding means of unlocking funds.

He said, “It is not, from my point of view the best way to go about it. I think that you can look at the natural resources you have and leverage those resources to generate financing for particular infrastructure investments for example.”

He also called on African nations to explore leveraging their national assets as a means to generate wealth.

The Vice President again reiterated government’s commitment to leveraging on the nation’s assets by putting together the Ghana Asset Management Corporation, GAMCORP which will be a dedicated body, backed by law to employ the tools to leverage on the nation’s assets to generate wealth.

Dr Bawumia believes wealth generation is key to the development of sovereign wealth finds, this he believes must be pursued patiently as it will take time to build a sovereign wealth fund to transform the economies of African nations.

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