News:
Kofi Armah-Buah right
November 18, 2022
Ranking member on the Trade Industry and Tourism Committee, Kofi Armah-Buah has expressed worry over the system where Ghana is currently importing palm oil.
He expressed his worry when the committee met with the Association of Ghana Industries, Ghana Union of Traders Association and Ghana Chamber of Commerce.
According to him in the days of Unilever in the Western Region, there were massive plantations of palm fruit, but there has not been serious land turner system for people to invest in those areas in the last 20 years.
According to him, the Committee met the stakeholders in the industry and they pointed out their challenges, the Ranking member noted. He said, “We need to go back to the basis and make sure we can look at the things we are doing. If you say you want people to start producing poultry in Ghana, what do you give them as incentives?” he queried in an interview.
And further added that, there is a lot for us to do; short term problems should be addressed. One of the short term problems to be addressed is government should be seen engaging the stakeholders and making them know that yes, “I know you are in difficulties and say things that are confident building words and steps that government is taking”.
He lamented that it is not happening so we urge this government to take those steps. Importation -what should we do? It is government’s duty to provide policy direction, and it is important for government to take the lead in making sure we restart.
He asserts that the requirement from GIPC, where people are expected to pay one million dollars to trade in Ghana should be reviewed and arguing that with all the warehouse and the traders who have taken over our country, “is it not time to review the GIPC Act to say the peanut we are required to do, we want you to do more than that. We want you to depart from bringing in product to manufacturing”.
Again, let us start manufacturing from 30 percent and increase to 60 percent so that all these companies importing will be forced to basically produce those products here. It is in this manufacturing that will create jobs, everybody knows that; “1D1F was a joke we pretended we were creating factories where in actual fact we were not, we were going to existing factory that had produced and throwing good money at them”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamp.com