Mr. Kwame Wiafe, the general manager of Wilmar Africa Limited, has asked for the inclusion of major industry actors in the formulation of food supply chain policies.
On Tuesday, November 15, 2022, the parliamentary-select committee on commerce, industry, and tourism met with some of the country’s largest trade unions to discuss and come up with quick, workable answers to Ghana’s current economic issues. Mr. Wiafe made this call at the meeting.
Speaking to the chair, Mr. Wiafe expressed his worries on the country’s increasing lack of foreign currency needed to acquire some basic goods.
Although Ghana has a surplus of resources to create various goods locally, Mr. Wiafe raised concern that the country has a propensity towards importing the same goods from elsewhere.
The difficulty we face is that we don’t have enough foreign exchange, he remarked, posing the question, “Where do we start from?”
He said, “There are low-hanging fruits,” adding that “as a nation, we have some sectors where we have manufacturing capabilities where we can produce products; unfortunately, most of these plants are leaving production because we have encouraged excessive imports; we have encouraged smuggling of these same products that we have the capacity to produce locally.”
He lamented, “We have conspired [WITH] and assisted others to bring these things to eliminate these capacities.
In order to support his argument, Mr. Wiafe gave a few examples, saying, “I can talk about soap. As we speak, as a country, we have the capacity to produce more than 200,000 metric tonnes of soap; the total consumption of soap is not above 150,000, so it means we have excess capacity, but if you go to the market, about 40% of the soap is imported or smuggled from Ivory Coast, Asia, and other places.”
“I have the ability to discuss detergents, margarine, and oil; our oil palm production capacity is 500,000 metric tonnes. I can carry 300,000 metric tons by myself. The entire amount of refined oil consumed is 200,000, but if you go to the market right now, roughly 80% of the refined oil is either imported or smuggled, and all the companies are either shut down or hardly running,” he noted. And in my opinion, the government ought to declare, “Enough is enough; we’ll safeguard our own.”
For his part, Mr. Clement Osei-Amoako, President of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce, urged the government to take action to give locally made goods a comparative and competitive advantage.
Source: newsthemegh.com