4/1/2017
Rt. Hon. Edward Korbly Doe Adjaho, Speaker of the Republic of Ghana,
Hon. Ebo Barton-Odro, Deputy Speaker,
Hon. Alan Bagbin, Majority Leader,
Hon. Osei Kyei-Mensah Bonsu, Minority Leader,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
Good morning.
It is my great pleasure to attend the Handover Ceremony of the Security Check-out Facilities Donated by China to the Parliament of Ghana. The donation of these facilities was announced during the visit of H.E. Mr. Yu Zhengsheng, Chairman of the National Committee of Chinese Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). These facilities include 3 sets of X-Ray Baggage Scanner, 3 sets of Walk Through Metal Detector, 100 sets of Hand Held Metal Detector and 1 set of Human Body Security Detector. With the help of technicians from the China Nuctech Company Limited, these facilities have been put into application and will play an important role in security protection work.
H.E. Chairman Yu’s visit was crowned with success last April. We thank Rt. Hon. Speaker Adjaho, the Parliament of Ghana, and the Ghanaian people for the warm reception. That visit, which was the first in the past 9 years by a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, wrote a new chapter in China-Ghana friendship.
Ghana is the second sub-Saharan African country to establish diplomatic relations with China. Over the past 56 years and through the efforts of several generations, China Ghana traditional friendship and mutual political trust have been consistently enhanced. Our cooperation on economy and trade has kept good momentum and yielded bountiful results. The Cape Coast Sports Stadium and Kotokuraba Market were successfully completed and handed over to the Ghanaian side last year. The project of 1,000 boreholes funded by Chinese government is under construction now and more than 300 boreholes have been completed. The two peoples communicate more frequently nowadays. At present, there are more than 4,600 Ghanaian students studying in China. In 2016, the Chinese government provided more than 1000 training opportunities to Ghana and the second Confucius Institute in Ghana was unveiled at the University of Cape Coast.
The Johannesburg Summit of FOCAC of December 2015 drew a magnificent blueprint for the development of China Africa relations. While greeting the new year of 2017 with a lot of hope, China is very ready to work with Ghana to accelerate the implementation of follow-up actions of the Summit. Apart from conducting more grant projects to improve people’s livelihood, China will do more to respond to Ghana’s appeal for job creation and industrialization. We will focus intensively on cooperation on production capacity, equipment manufacturing and private sector, and explore new areas and new modes for cooperation so as to help Ghana to embark on the road of self-sustained development.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Rt. Hon. Speaker is my old friend and I am so grateful to him for what he has done to promote friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Ghana.
Thank you.