News:
July 24, 2025
The Roads and Highways Minister, Governs Kwame Agbodza is in a collision with cement manufacturing companies over prices of their products.
According to him the manufacturers have no justification for keeping the prices where they are now; around GHC120.00 because their initial argument for pushing prices that high was based on the exchange rate at the time.
They maintained at the time that a chunk of their raw materials was sourced externally, thus highly affected by the exchange rate.
It is however surprising that since the appreciation of the cedi, they have refused to pass on the gains to the ordinary consumer and just maintained the prices high up.
Whereas every commodity in terms of pricing has responded to the gains we have all made as a people by reducing prices, cement dealers are refusing to pass on the gains to buyers”.
Henceforth, we, at the Ministry of Roads and Highways would take a second look at all those producers who are refusing to pass on some of the gains to the public in determining where we direct the major government projects that use cement , shall be more aligned to cement producers who are ready to pass on the gains to made in the economy in terms of stability of the currency to consumers”.
“If you are a cement producer today, you better look at the possibility of passing on the gains made in the economy in terms of your input so that prices of cement would come down”.
He affirmed that the prices of cement are directly linked to the cost of government projects, which invariably would be paid by the Ghanaian taxpayer.
The Minister who was addressing the press prior to the presentation of the mid-year budget review said the government is about to roll out massive road infrastructure projects which consume a lot of cement; and “we have the capacity to direct that cement should not be sourced from those who are not ready to reduce their prices to reflect the economic reality we live in currently.”
Ghanamps.com