Engage services of local printers — Ashigbey
The Managing Director of Graphic Communications Group Limited, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, has urged publishers to engage local printers as part of the effort to boost the local economy.
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He said if publishers allowed foreign printers to do their printings, it put pressure on the foreign exchange and weakened the cedi, since publishers would need foreign currency for their transactions.
He was speaking on the topic “The Future of Textbook Publishing in Ghana: Can we Guarantee an Industry for the next generation?” at the annual general meeting of the Ghana Book Publishers Association (GBPA) in Accra yesterday.
Creation of Jobs
Mr Ashigbey explained that when publishers used the services of local printers, it would create more jobs.
“I know it is not easy because it is cheaper in foreign countries like India, but I believe it is in the interest of publishers to make the necessary sacrifice in order to win the battle for the good publishing environment,” he said.
According to Mr Ashigbey, poor reading habit among the people of Ghana has negatively affected the textbooks business.
Mr Ashigbey said the India publishing industry was booming due to the high population of readers.
“According to “Perspectives on publishing in India (2014-2015)”, a publication by Frankfurter Buchmesse, a survey of the India population in 2010 indicated that a whopping 83 million youth were book readers. This is more than three times the entire population of Ghana which clearly implies that the publishing industry in Ghana will thrive if we encourage reading, Mr Ashigbey stated.
Poor Reading Habit
The Deputy Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Mrs Dzifa Gomashie, advised the publishers not to focus only on publishing books but must also be interested in whipping up the interest of the public in reading.
Mrs Gomashie suggested that publishers should set up funds for promoting reading in the country, and help to create rural libraries as well as donate reading books to reading clubs.
She said that publishers should engage the government as well as individuals in order to strengthen the sector.
Need to Excel
The President of GBPA, Mr Elliot Agyare, stated that there had been unhealthy and a perpetual “mutual assured suspicion existing between the book industry, especially the publishers, and the Ministry of Education in the government procurement process, which was a challenge.
“The government needs to provide a regular pattern of procuring books because if the procurement is erratic, we cannot plan for anything,” he said.
The Ghana Culture Forum, represented by Mr Akunu Daked, chaired the function, and said the association should yearn for excellence and relevance in whatever they did and encourage the young to read content that would lead to national development.