Ghanaian public institutions have been directed to buy all toilet roll from local manufacturers

This directive comes a day after Vice President Bawumia directed the Ghana Cocoa Board to purchase all their fertilizer from local producers in the next crop growing season.

He explained that the decision to insist on local procurement is as a result of the success of the One District One Factory initiative, which has led to the setting up of several factories in different sectors which have boosted local capacity and can meet local demand.

Aside from the Brompton Portfolio’s toilet paper manufacturing factory four more toilet paper production factories have also been set up under the 1D1F initiative to augment those produced by the nine existing factories. Officials of the Ministry of Trade and Industry say the 14 factories can meet local demand.

The import bill for toilet rolls last year was $70 million, with imports from countries as far as Vietnam, Honduras, Panama, Bahamas, and Marshall Islands.

“We know that in this country we have a huge dependence on imports and so the import bill tends to be very high and we rather export a lot of our primary commodities. The vision of the President is for us to move away from the export of the primary commodities to the manufacturing of these commodities, and this is the background for the One District One Factory initiative.”

Vice President Dr. Bawumia Pulse Ghana

“One of the achievements in this particular one District one factory initiative is in the area of the manufacture of toilet rolls in Ghana. When we came into office there were nine companies existing which dealt with toilet roll manufacturing. Since then in the last two-and-a-half years we’ve added five additional factories. So Ghana’s capacity to produce toilet rolls has increased generally by about 50% which is very very significant.”

“Given the success of One District One Factory, Government as we stated in our manifesto, is going to use the power of its procurement to support local industries...”

“We are also saying if you look at the 14 manufacturers of toilet roll that we have in Ghana, 1D1F has brought five, we had an existing 9 already, and the capacity of that 14 is able to meet most of our demand for toilet rolls in Ghana, so why import? So we are saying from the next procurement cycle, all government institutions – whether it’s the military or the police or the hospitals or the schools, because the taxpayer funds all government institutions – if you’re going to buy toilet roll, all that toilet roll must be bought from local manufacturing companies. So we are using the taxpayer’s money to support our local industries. This will create jobs, will save foreign exchange, will grow the economy and this is the vision of One District One Factory.”

The Vice President continued, “This is the policy going forward. We are going to use our taxpayers’ money to support local manufacturing companies in the context of 1D1F. This is not a new policy, it is something that we had in our manifesto before we came into office but now we have built sufficient capacity in certain areas and therefore we can actualize that particular policy.”

Ghanaian public institutions have been directed to buy all toilet roll from local manufacturers

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