VW begins local assembling of vehicles …Nissan and Toyota to follow soon

  The global automobile giant, Volkswagen, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government of Ghana in 2018 to begin the process of establishing an assembling plant in the country to serve the West African sub-regional market.

In March this year officials of the company took some Ghanaian government officials round their assembling plant in Accra.

Earlier this year also, a planned official launch of the plant was called off due to the novel coronavirus but it hasn’t stopped the German automaker Volkswagen’s (VW) work from going on. It has started putting its car assembling plant in the country to good use with pictures emerging of some of the cars already assembled.

VW has already begun production of five Volkswagen models—Tiguan, Passat, Polo sedan, Teramont and Amarok pickup, at its Accra plant place. Nissan and Toyota are expected to open their own plants this year.

This would be first phase of the company’s operations in the West African nation, as it plans to expand across Africa.

To support demand for locally-assembled vehicles and save hard-earned foreign exchange, the government has reduced the car imports into the country. Ghana’s top five imports by value are vehicles, industrial machinery, electronic machinery, cereals, and plastics.

Of the vehicles imported, used and salvaged automobiles constitute a significant proportion and are quite popular since most people cannot afford new vehicles.

In a recent press briefing in Accra, Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Majority Leader in parliament, said: “You would know that thanks to the economic environment that we have now, and of course the political stability that we have in the country, the sojourning of the President is yielding positive dividends in the sense that there are many auto-manufacturing companies that now want to come and begin assembling automobile in the country.”

“Volkswagen has given massive indication; Nissan is also doing same, Toyota and Sinotruck as well as Renault. Now if they want to come we need to clean up the environment, you cannot have them to come and begin production of vehicles when you allow unfettered importation of second-hand vehicles. It doesn’t occur anywhere, so you have to regulate the importation of second-hand vehicles.

“For a start, maybe we may begin by banning the importation of vehicles that are older than 10 years and then also prevent the import of salvaged vehicles (accident cars),” the Majority Leader added.


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