Industrialist Nana Appiah Minkah has charged government to ban the importation of some products into the country to protect Ghana’s young manufacturing industry.
[contextly_sidebar id=”W4zjHxAlysuPB66hPO1QPvbjWROzPr4v”]According to him, Nigeria is doing something similar, with the country currently banning close to 350 products from accessing their market.
Vegetable oil, soaps, tooth pick, bicycles, among others have all been banned and “as a result of banning some of these products Indomie has acquired 250,000 hectors to do palm plantation in Nigeria”, Nana Appiah Minkah stressed.
Nigeria banned him from importing Apino soap and Mama vegetable cooking oil in 2004.
He explained that,” with the help of some of my business friends, I saw the higher authorities, the minister there said I should go and tell my people to ban products”.
Ghana’s industrial sector has been struggling over the years due to a multiplicity of factors including competition with cheap imports from abroad.
Nana Appiah Minkah says government must learn from the Nigerian example.
“Unless we do something to protect the Ghanaian local industry, we are just wasting time , it should be a policy, it is time to find ways and means to protect the local Ghanaian industry”, he said.
The Minister of Trade and Industry Dr.Ekow Spio-Garbrah in an interview with Citi Business News said his ministry and the foreign ministry were in discussions with the Nigerian government to prevent a tit for tat situation.
But he said Ghana was not considering any plan to ban some products from being imported into the country for the meantime.
“we also are as eager as any country to protect our own industries , there are many ways to protect industry , simply banning products may seem advantageous in the short term but it may make your industry uncompetitive in the longer term”, Dr. Spio-Garbrah revealed.
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By: Rabiu Alhassan/citifmonline.com/Ghana