Ghana oasis of peace — Krofah

THE Continued stable political climate in Ghana has made the country an oasis of peace amongst the turbulent political climate prevailing in the African continent, the President of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GNCCI), Mr Wilson A. Krofah has observed.
He said the past year witnessed an appreciable improvement in the Ghanaian economy, which created a conducive environment for business.
Mr Krofah, who said this at the 37th Annual General Meeting of the Chamber in Accra yesterday, however indicated that the resilience of the Ghanaian economy in the face of adverse development in international economies, arising from unprecedented oil prices in the past year amply demonstrated the moderate inflationary pressure experienced in the economy.
Speaking at the meeting attended by members of the Chamber and representatives from the Ministry of Trade & Industry, he said unfortunately, the economic situation had deteriorated during the current year, with the performance of the cedi against the United State dollar recording its worst rate of depreciation in eight years.
“From the beginning of the year to date, the cedi depreciated against the US Dollar by 22.17 per cent, the highest rate of depreciation since it recorded depreciation of 49 per cent in December 2000”, he noted.
Consequently, he asserted that importers were paying more for imports and domestic consumers were faced with higher price of imported goods, adding that the Bank of Ghana had also increased the base rate from 12 per cent to 17 per cent as at date, whilst lending interest rate by the commercial banks had correspondingly increased from 18 per cent to 27 per cent.
In view of these development, Mr Krofah said the cost of doing business in Ghana had gone up, and access to credit by the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) remained problematic.
According to him the market was increasingly becoming competitive with influx of cheap imports from the People’s Republic of China and the far Eastern countries.
Whilst welcoming competition as a means of moderating prices in the market, and providing a bench mark for local manufactures to emulate, Mr Krofah complained that the modus oprandi of some of the foreign nationals distributing these imported products was at variance with the investment laws of the country.
In accordance with that, he indicated that the Chamber together with other associations prompted the Ghana Investment Promotion Council (GIPC) and the Ministry of Trade & Industry (MOTI), who have taken the appropriate action to remedy the situation.
As part of their business strategy, Mr Krofah said the Chamber was actively involved in deliberating on measure that would lead to an improvement in the business environment and speedy service delivery by Government Departments and Agencies whose operations have direct bearing on the private sector.
The Chamber, he disclosed was striving to build strong relationship with Chambers of Commerce in Iran, Singapore, Vietnam and the Union of African Chambers.
“We are also spearheading the revival of the Federation of West African Chamber of Commerce with full support from the ECOWAS Commission”, he stated and pointed out that it was imperative that all the barriers to trade amongst the 15 ECOWAS states were removed in order for member countries to take full advantage of the large market of over 250 million people.
Mr Krofah stated that the Chamber would also like government to ensure that as much as possible, businesses associated with the oil industry go to Ghanaians, particularly the service sector such as banking, transportation, catering and the supply of consumer goods produced in Ghana.
“In the face of the on-going financial crisis in the world, we expect government to manage the Ghanaian economy in such a way as to ensure stability of the cedi against international currencies, and control inflation so as to moderate cost of doing business in Ghana”.
He further urged government to pay more attention to the call to modernise agriculture and to give support to indigenous businesses to enable Ghanaians take the commanding height of the Ghanaian economy.
The Technical Director of the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Mr Isaac Tagoe in an interview, also explained that the reduction in the fuel prices was not politically motivated because the Tema Oil Refinery had in stock huge sums of oil to offset the imposing oil prices on the world market.
He said their action was independent and they did not intentionally reduce the prices to the advantage of the incumbent government.
He said their personnel were on the ground ensuring that oil marketing companies displayed the new prices on their billboards.
Mr Tagoe said OPEC had announced a reduction in production by 2 million barrels per day and the expectation was that prices would go up but they do not expect prices to go up artificially.