The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) has said there is a need to hasten slowly relative to the import restriction Leglstaive Instrument (L.I) that is seeking to ban the import of 22 products.
Appearing before the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of Parliament on Tuesday, the President of GUTA, Dr. Joseph Obeng, said that the union has not been furnished with all the information on the L.I.
“We have to move slowly while we are trying to achieve self-sufficiency and do the right things. What is the threshold that qualifies a product to be restricted? Are we talking about 60 percent or 40 percent of production?
“We have not been given all this information and that is why we have called that instead of putting any impediment on trading, they should ban whatever they want to ban, and we will know that the product is banned but putting restrictions on us because we just want to import to meet demand is uncalled-for,” he said.
The minority in Parliament described the L. I as a discredited and old-fashioned licensing regime.
Deputy Minority Leader Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said this L.I., if passed would breed corruption.
“We are not able to say that as a result of the One-District-One-Factory (1D1F), we are not importing into Ghana one of these products. We are not able to say that because of Planting for Food and Jobs after we spent all these billions, we have solved all these problems. If we want to solve the problem of our import bill, the reasons why this is being done, we must address it honestly.”
“But to go back to a very discredited and outmoded licensing regime that has created corruption. You don’t put politicians in charge of issuing licenses; you know what the outcome will be. We have gone past that,” he said.
The Trade Minister justified the move to restrict the importation.
Speaking during a press briefing in Parliament, the Minister of Trade and Industry, K.T Hammond said, “Stomach of animals, bladder and the chunk of intestines (yemuadie), the country had had to put in an amount of about $164 million towards the importation of these items. We are taking steps to ensure that in terms of rice, there’s no poverty of rice in the country.
“By these restrictions, we are not going to ensure that there’s no food in the country at all; that is not the point at all. There have to be some efforts by the government to ensure that we go back to Acheampong’s operation feed yourself. There are about 22 items on the list, one of them, I think, is diapers.”