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Business News of Friday, 17 June 2016

Source: classfmonline.com

Let’s use local resources to spur dev’t - Nylander

File photo: Customers in a made-in-Ghana products shop File photo: Customers in a made-in-Ghana products shop

Mandatory policies will be key to ensuring the success of Ghanaian products and businesses, for which reason policies and regulations must be implemented to promote consumption of local products, a prominent member of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Ladi Nylander, has suggested.

He argued that local resources must be used by government to help people produce and supply Made-in-Ghana products.

"If I were in a situation to make state policy, I would say that African prints should be worn on Mondays and Tuesdays in addition to Fridays to show seriousness. We can say to all hotels that 50 per cent of your menu must be Ghanaian cuisine. For example, in Morocco, if you are given a contract for a building, 50 per cent of the fittings must be Moroccan artefacts. You should not have a situation where parliament, which is the highest legislative body of the country, has 90 percent of furniture from China," he told Prince Minkah on Class FM's Executive Breakfast Show on Friday 17th June, 2016.

Asked by the host if it was wrong to have products or human resource from development partners, he said that leaders should be empowering citizens first because even if China is a development partner to Ghana, "the government of Ghana must not make the Chinese better off than the Ghanaian".

To him, this reason informed PPP flagbearer Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom to state that if he becomes president and there is a state reception for example, everything that will be consumed will be local.

"Everything that will go into it…will be from Ghana, whether it is palm wine or plantain chips. That way you are empowering everybody… These days all kinds of goods are coming from China, in other words we are exporting employment to people in China, to people in Malaysia, because we are importing their goods which Ghanaians could do,” he lamented.

The former chairman of the Convention People's Party (CPP) held the opinion that there was no vision driving rebranding and promotion of Ghanaian products, culture, and tradition.

"Ghana has the elements to create that vision. We have the best cocoa in the world. We have people that are friendly and cultures that are interesting. The first European building in Africa was Elmina Castle in 1492. The castles were also a transit point for slave trade and we are the land mass closest to the centre of the world, all that can be part of the vision but I have not seen it," he observed.