The Ghana Standards Authority has signed two separate Memorandum of Understanding with the Maltese Medicine Authority and Aqua Biotic to improve on the quality of Ghana’s fish exports.
The MoU is for the establishment of partnerships between these institutions in their operations.
Professor Alex Dodoo, the Executive Director of GSA, told the Ghana News Agency after the signing on the sidelines of the second Ghana-Malta Business Forum, said the Malta Medicines Authority already has MoU with the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).
He said the Medicines Authority had signed an earlier MoU with the GSA purely for the development and enforcement of standards in areas to support both the work of the FDA and the work of medicine manufacturers.
Prof Dodoo said the move was to support the medicine manufacturers to properly package their products according to standardisation in order to access international markets, particularly the EU market.
“So this is more of trade facilitation, the regulatory function of the FDA is going to be strengthened by their MoU.
“Our job with the MoU that we have signed with the Malta Medicine Authority is to ensure that GSA would tackle issues with World Trade Organisations regulation and issues to do with standards and its application”, he added.
On the part of Aqua Biotic, Prof Dodoo said it has more to do with the fisheries sector.
He said currently, the GSA was working with the FDA and the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development to ensure that they expand the sector.
“Currently, it is just under $100 million a year of export but we believe that this can increase at least two to three times over the next two years,” he added.
He said the partnership was to develop aquaculture in a way that where there was no marine fishes and during the lean season, fisher folks could have fishes and also it was to ensure these fishes meet all the requirement pertaining to exports.
It will also entail the entire value chain, from fingerlings to the fish feed and to how the fish was actually treated to before exports.
He said with the partnership, their counterparts would provide technical expertise, which would enable them go through testing.
“In fact, the focus is on testing, we want to increase our capability to test all sort of products, whether it is poison, chemicals, insecticides, but there will be a few medicines but most of the medicine testing is still with the FDA and other agencies,” he added.
He said as part of the partnership there would be exchanges of staff between these institutions, because Malta also want to learn how the African market looked like, how they could penetrate the market.
Other MoU signed during the forum includes the Accra Technical University and the Maltese College of Arts, Science and Technology; Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and; the GSA and Aqua Biotic; Aqua Biotic and the Akosombo Zone Fish Farmers Association and Impact Hub and Malta Enterprise.
