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The Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, has expressed appreciation at the work of the country’s engineers for their excellent management of the Akosombo, VALCO and other plants in the energy sector.Hon. Mr Buah said when given the opportunity, Ghanaian engineers had the aptitude and ability to run a world-class operation and to deliver first class service.
He was speaking at an oil and gas conference organised by the Enterprise Development Centre in Accra.
The conference was on the theme: ‘Empowering, developing, creating, and enhancing opportunities for Ghanaian service in the oil and gas industry.’
According to Hon. Mr Buah, government believed that, with the discovery of oil in the Jubilee field, it should implement policy interventions that would enhance the opportunities for technicians, engineers and entrepreneurs to increase their participation, roles and economic rewards from the activities of the oil and gas sector.
He noted that, the Ministry of Energy had already developed a policy on local content and local participation in petroleum activities as the platform for achieving the goals for the oil and gas sector with participation by Ghanaian citizens in all roles, at all levels and in all activities relating to the oil and gas value chain.
Hon. Mr Buah said the purpose of establishing the Enterprise Development Centre in the Western region was to provide support to SMEs to take advantage of business opportunities that were available in the oil and gas sector.
This, according to him, would involve the provision of a range of services such as capacity building programmes, business training, advisory services and access to market and information.
He said the Centre would also act as the focal point for co-ordination between Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), oil and gas companies and their contractors and sub-contractors, adding that, SME development was crucial to the achievement of Ghana’s local contract policy goals.
The Minister noted that, no economy had grown sustainably without addressing the SME sector because the sector’s contribution to employment was huge, with revenues directly put into the hands of the communities.
He congratulated the Jubilee Partners — Tullow Ghana Ltd, Kosmos, Anadarko, Petro SA and GNPC— who had agreed to fund the establishment of the Centre for a period of 5 years.
Source: ISD
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