Ghana EXIM Chief Targets Import Substitution with Rice, Poultry, Garments Push

Ghana Exim Bank’s chief executive has unveiled a sweeping 2025-2030 strategy pivoting the state-owned lender away from raw commodity finance toward aggressive import substitution, naming rice, poultry, and garments & apparel as flagship sectors for state-backed credit.

Speaking at the Kwahu Business Forum, the CEO announced that three enterprises Perferct End Logistics, Nobi Farms, and Rockmar Pharmaceutical  had cleared the bank’s credit process and secured board approval for disbursement, following engagement at last year’s forum.

But the headline was strategic. With Ghana spending over US$1 billion annually on imported rice and poultry alone, the Bank is now prioritising domestic production in those value chains, alongside textiles. “This is unacceptable,” the CEO said, explicitly linking the shift to President John Mahama’s ‘Akukuo inkitin-inkitin’ programme.

The strategy implicitly critiques Ghana’s fragmented approach to industrial policy, where “finance is separated from production, production separated from markets, and markets separated from long-term strategy.” The remedy, according to the Bank, is a three-phase roadmap to 2030: foundation-laying, scaling and market penetration (leveraging AfCFTA), then deeper industrialisation.

Targets are ambitious. By 2030, GEXIM projects a 60% increase in rice production, at least 60% self-sufficiency in poultry, a two- to three-fold rise in non-traditional export revenue, over 100,000 new direct jobs, a four-fold increase in foreign exchange earnings from exports, and a 40% cut in imports in selected sectors.

“These are ambitious targets. Rightly so,” the CEO acknowledged, adding that Ghana’s needs demand more than incremental change.

The Bank is deemphasising collateral requirements for MSMEs while promising strategic support beyond finance certification, logistics, standards, and market access. Women and young entrepreneurs in agribusiness, processing, and digital trade were named as priority beneficiaries.

The challenge, as the CEO conceded, is sustained “financial muscle.” Whether treasury and development partners will match the rhetoric remains the open question. But for now, Accra has signalled a clear directional shift: produce what you consume, process what you produce, export what you make.