AGI solicits protection for industry

Nana Owusu Afari, president of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), has kicked against allowing all manner of inferior products onto the local market while other countries across the world protect their economies against such goods.

Delivering a speech Monday in Accra during etv- Ghana’s celebration of its Made-In-Ghana month, Nana Afari noted that Ghana’s private sector needed Government to firmly hold its hands as was the situation in other developed countries to protect local producers and manufacturers.

According to him, it was about time government supported the private sector to economically empower Ghanaian entrepreneurs. In this vein, he appealed to the country’s authorities to provide the appropriate trade policies on a sustainable and uninterrupted basis.

Etv Ghana initiated the programme to help promote the consumption of locally-manufactured products and improve the quality of Ghanaian products.

Nana Afari therefore tasked local firms to scale up their capacities to produce products whose standards would be internationally accepted since already, government was being consulted at various stages to further develop the private sector.

In a remark, Ernest Boateng, General Manager of Global Media Alliance, operators of etv- Ghana, called on Ghanaians to buy made-in-Ghana goods so as to create more employment, noting that “if we are not careful, these industries will collapse.”

He said the standards of locally made goods should not be compromised. Amponsah Bediako, Head of the Public Relations Department of the Ghana Standards Authority, on his part, said the rush to make profits at all cost had culminated in a situation where local importers go for just anything from outside the country and dump these on the market.

He expressed his faith in the capacity of Ghanaian manufacturers to produce according to internationally-accepted standards in the interest of safety, quality and protection of the consumer.

Noting also that some local manufacturers did not take the pain to ensure strict compliance with certification requirements, Mr Amponsah Bediako urged them to stick to the rules in order to further project Ghana to the international market.