We have, time and again, said that the unbridled liberalisation policy is killing our local industries. All along it appears nobody, including the hierarchy of the government, has paid heed to our concerns.
Last Tuesday, we were happy that our pleas for the revival of local production and consumption have reached the corridors of power.
President John Mahama, in his State of the Nation Address, called for the transformation of the structure of the Ghanaian economy to reflect a taste for local products.
Ghana’s economy, as the President said, was designed by the colonial powers to be an exporter of raw materials and importer of finished products.
When the cedi started its free fall a few weeks ago, the Daily Graphic drew the attention of policy makers to the structure of the economy because the cedi would not stabilise against the major currencies in the face of our uncontrolled taste for imported goods.
A casual visitor to our cities, towns and villages will come to the conclusion that even as we pride ourselves as an agricultural country, we are basically traders in foreign merchandise rather than producers for local consumption and for export.
President Mahama is not the first to make the attempt to promote the consumption of local products, except that in the latest policy direction he has tickled the conciousness of the people to rethink the mad rush for imported items as against those that are produced locally.
We have tried to promote Friday wear but the policy has been more cosmetic than an action-oriented one to revive the local production of fabrics and textiles and thereby ‘resurrect’ the collapsed textiles industry.
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and other stakeholders have also tried to sensitise the people to patronise made-in-Ghana goods, but here again the reaction of consumers has been very unimpressive.
The Daily Graphic believes that the Ghanaian is not proud of what is made by Ghanaians but has a strong taste for foreign goods, forgetting that by their actions they are promoting the economies of other countries.
There is no local company worth celebrating as doing very well because its products, even if they are of high quality, are not patronised on the local market.
We are always told that the lack of capacity of our local companies accounts for their uncompetitiveness on the market.
The question we ask is: How do we build local capacities if we do not patronise their products?
Some time ago, rice was not a major staple in the country, but today it is ‘swallowing’ a chunk of our foreign exchange.
It is for this and many other reasons that the President’s plans should not remain mere rhetoric but he, in collaboration with his team, should operationalise the dreams to restructure the economy, with emphasis on local production and consumption.
We should “eat what we grow and grow what we eat”.
