The Finance Ministry has proposed to the trading community a new Industrialization Committee to help importers begin manufacturing some of the things they buy from other countries.
This comes on the back of an announcement of a phased reversal of the benchmark values discount policy starting March 1, 2022.
The Finance Ministry last week announced that after consultations with stakeholders in the trading community on the benchmark values reduction policy, the government had finally concluded on a 30 percent discount for all goods and a 10 percent discount for vehicles.
This represented a drop from the previous arrangement which saw a discount of 50% being applied on the benchmark values of selected goods and a 30 percent discount being applied on vehicles.
The new revisions according to the Finance Ministry, is the first step in a phased approach to reversing the Benchmark Values Reduction policy completely.
While the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) expressed their disappointment with the announcement, the importing community including members of the Ghana Union of Traders Association welcomed the move.
Speaking to Citi Business news on the way forward, A Deputy Minister of Finance, Abena Osei-Asare said the formation of an Industrialization Committee will not only help some of the importers to produce some of the things they import but also help the government in its industrialization drive.
“The Industrialization Committee will help our traders to move from being just importers to being able to produce locally some of the things they import. This we believe will go a long way to help us in our industrialization. We believe that we should start small. The things we import, what can we do to reduce our dependence on these imports.”
“So we want to bring this committee together to see how best we can streamline and make it possible for some of our importers to be able to set up factories here,” she added.
