Trade Commission moves to check dumping - open doors to local businesses
THE Ghana International Trade Commission (GITC) has opened its doors to local businesses to raise red flags about dumping of foreign goods into the country for the necessary action and redress.
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According to the commission, it is able to investigate and effect some remedial measures including exacting anti-dumping measures including raising taxes on dumped goods into the country.
Dumping has become a major challenge for many local businesses because they always have to compete on pricing which in many instances make the local products, particularly poultry, uncompetitive because the products are cheaper.
For instance, over a million dollars’ worth of poultry is dumped into the country every year at rock bottom prices which makes the locally produced ones highly uncompetitive.
The development has gravely impacted the local poultry industry with many moving away from the business to concentrate on other areas.
The Executive Secretary of GITC, Frank Agyekum, said unfair trade prices has a lot to do with the dumping of foreign goods in Ghana at a subsidised rate which makes them cheaper here in Ghana than the locally produced ones.
Making reference to the poultry industry, he said “these foreigners bring them here because it costs less exporting the parts they do not like the chicken feet, back and wings. Most of the things, especially in the poultry industry, you realise that what they bring in here are the rejects they want to dispose of like chicken feet, the back and neck.”
“At times disposing of those over there are more expensive so it is cheaper for them to export them at almost no cost to them to our countries to dump in our markets and prevent our local ones from selling. As a result of our markets collapsing, we lose revenues and jobs and we continue to live in poverty,” he added.
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Mr Agyekum was speaking at a multi-stakeholder workshop on unfair food prices in Ghana organised by GITC in partnership with Consumers International last Thursday in Accra.
The event brought together policy makers and players in the food supply chain to share evidence and expertise on unfair food prices and discuss policy and enforcement actions required from authorities to take action against unfair food prices caused by anti-competitive practices.
He said “If you are able to approach us on these matters we are able to investigate and exact measures. So to every business that is faced with unfair trade practices the GITC is there for you to address these practices.”
Price fall on global market
The Consumers International specialist for fair food prices in Africa, Davine Minayo, said the issue of unfair food prices has been a challenge for the African continent.
She said food commodity prices on global markets have been falling for over a year. However, the prices that consumers have to pay are still rising rapidly and small-scale farmers have not benefitted from rising prices.
That, she said, was clear evidence that value was not being distributed fairly in our food marketplace.
Mrs Minayo explained that rising food prices were causing serious consumer harm such that more than 15 million people in Ghana representing 49 per cent of the population were food insecure in 2022.
To address this issue, she said it was important to work with the competition authority to make businesses comply with regulatory authorities especially in cases where prices of food commodities have risen higher than the world.
“As a consumer organisation, we are intervening in this space. Most consumers continue to be food insecure, and the situation is dire.
So, we are working in this space to bring together stakeholders so that we can improve the available evidence on the prices of food and come up with good solutions to address this,” she said.
Reviving poultry industry
The Executive Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers, Lawrence Amartey Tetteh, said the frequent dumping of chicken into the Ghanaian market has worsened the challenges of Ghana's poultry industry which was on the verge of collapse due to the lack of regulations to check the dumping of chicken onto the market.
The situation drives prices of chicken products through the roof.
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Mr Tetteh said the government has failed to put in measures despite the appeals made to discourage the dumping of cheap imported poultry products into the country and create fair competition for the local poultry industry.
He said to revive the local poultry industry and effect fair prices of poultry products such as eggs and chicken, the government must impose huge taxes on poultry product imports from the foreign market.