President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), Dr Joseph Obeng has reiterated that the respective traders in Ghana are unfairly faulted for the escalation of the foreign exchange rate against the cedi.
According to him, this public assertion from the government and Ghanaians at large influenced him to pen down a lengthy press release to President Akufo-Addo through the Finance Minister spelling out what is on the part of traders and what ought not to be on the administration of the country.
“Normally if you’ve noticed how I’ve made my press statements normally they are very straight to the point and maybe some have paragraphs have been made but this particular was just like a thesis. It was such a long piece for a press statement because of the times that we are in. Whatever we are doing we need to calculate in this current state”
In an interview with Samuel Eshun on e.tv Ghana’s informational talk show, “Fact Sheet” he noted that the traders union in the country have pledged good intentions to the development of Ghana. Hence indicated that traders go beyond ordinarily importing goods from other countries to Ghana.
“I was thinking that we’re talking about foreign exchange and we as traders we are importers and so for the bare fact that we are importers it’s presumed that we are the cause of the problem regarding the foreign exchange. So I have to take my time and let the good people of Ghana understand that we are not the cause. As a matter of fact we have good intentions to help government and we also have good intentions for Ghanaians. We also do not trade purposely for importations that is only the buying aspect of it the second aspect is the exportation. So for we as traders we don’t only import but export goods as well,” he added.
He however admitted that the country over-relies heavily on imports while export values are minimal. He further attributed this to the lack of information on exportable products.
“In this part of the world most of us here do more imports than export and our major problem has been the fact that we don’t have enough information about exportable commodities, the destinations that we have to send those goods, the prices and quality that is required,” he shared.
The GUTA president further disclosed that his outfit has held some meetings with the country’s Export Promotion Authorities to discuss such issues, “so that they can give us the relevant information so that we can also do exports to help the country.”
On Monday, August 8, The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) in a statement expressed concern over the persistent depreciation of the Ghana Cedi against major trading currencies as they described the situation as “getting out of hand”.
GUTA indicated that as a result of the depreciation, “businesses have reached a situation where their survival is seriously threatened if no immediate action is taken by the Government to find a solution.”