Government’s move to lay a Legislative Instrument (LI) in Parliament to ban the importation of certain products may hit a snag after the Minority raised reservations on it.
Products like animals’ intestines, rice, chicken, oil, sugar, amongst others were part of the items government didn’t want them imported into the country.
The Minority’s stance against the LI has been supported by Professor Ransford Gyampo of the University of Ghana who says the initiative, even though good, was being rolled out poorly.
According to him, government should ensure adequate preparations have been made before carrying out such initiative in order not to put the nation into trouble.
On the KeyPoints on TV3 Saturday, November 25, 2023, Professor Gyampo said “you must prepare before you begin to ban importations of these things. You must ensure that the local economies would be able to manufacture locally before you ban.”
He explains that government must encourage local production by giving incentives to ensure that “rice for instance, we can produce enough to feed us.”
He says government being the largest buyer of rice should ensure that he buys local rice for all the school feeding programmes to feed the children and encourage the ministries, departments and agencies to also purchase these locally manufactured products.
“If it’s vehicle, empowering Kantanka to produce more and insist that all the MMDCEs purchase from him and then in that case they enjoy economies of scale so that the local products become cheaper than the imported ones,” he added.
The political science lecturer added that the fact that one minister has to solely decide as to whom a license should be given to import a product or not is an avenue to breed corruption.
“It’s an unnecessary arrangement for corruption that must not be countenanced,” he noted.
Prof. Gyampo also described the move as a comedy.
“The governance or managing a developing economy like that of Ghana is not a matter of comedies it’s a serious business.
“This LI and the attempt to smuggle it in, and I saw KT Hammond the way and manner he was going about this in Parliament then I said ‘this man, he doesn’t know what’s up!’
“If you want to do this, you should have started from day one. You do not wait till the last minute of your tenure and then you say that you want to introduce something that should have taken you the whole period of 8 years to prepare to do,” he espoused.
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