By: Fred Yaw Sarpong
The Daily Express
fsarpong@theeventpr.com
The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), mother body of trading groups in the country says they will review the 2018 Budget Statement presented to Parliament by the Finance Minister, Mr. Ken Ofori Attah last week.
GUTA’s review of the budget is to allow the association comes out with a position on the 2018 budget statement, especially in areas that affect the trading community in the country.
Mr. Tetteh Paddy, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of GUTA and a member of the Abossey Okai Spare Parts dealers association said the committee of the association will meet to consider the budget.
“Though we didn’t hear so much been mention about the trading community in the budget, we could see that the 2018 budget statement is gear towards industry, manufacturing and agriculture, which of course we also play a critical role there.”
Traders play supplementary role by distributing the goods and services from the companies especially those in the agribusiness sector. This budget was not specific when it comes to trading aspect in terms of importation of goods and services. However, we are the distributing channel of those in the agribusiness industry and for that matter we are concern about the successes of these sectors.”
He pointed out that the 2017 budget statement tackled most of their challenges especially with regard to nuisance taxes. “We are all aware when Abossey Okai Spare Parts dealers were given 11% on import duty and also 17.5% VAT on the bank charges has been taken out and few other exemptions that were given which we are still enjoying.”
He told the Daily Express that, the areas they were expecting to hear more was the area of the banking aspect where many of investors are complaining of high interest rate on borrowing from the bank. “The interest rate on borrowing is still on the higher side at the rate of 33% and 35% to 40%. These interest rates make cost of doing business in Ghana very difficult,” he told the Daily Express.
The trading community was expecting the government to announced measures to deal with interest rates. “We were expecting the government to come out to tell us what are the measures put in place to reduce the banks interest rates.”
The Finance Minister mentioned that the government will make sure that interest rates come down. But the traders in the country were expecting detail measures from the budget on reduction of interest rates for doing business.
The commercial banks have been complaining of high risk of lending to businesses in the country. As a result of that most of the banks peg their interest rates on the higher side (between 28% and 40%) in order to make them recoup their loans.
GUTA is of the view that government would have discuss the possible interest rate cut with the banking sector, which may have given some hope to the trading community.
‘Recently, we were complaining about import duties. Though that some exemptions were given but the value of our import has gone up drastically. “If the value go up, at the end the duties are added up which eventually affect the final consumer.”
“These are some of the things we were expecting the government to come out with to give us a clear cut policy direction as to what it is going to do in those areas. But we didn’t hear much.”
GUTA also raised concern on the influx of the illegal traders on the markers. “This is something we have been complaining about for several years. It seems the government is not concern about that. We were expecting to hear something but the finance did not say anything,” he added.
They were expecting the government to announced measures in place to deal with the illegal trading activities by some foreigners in the sector.
“In all agriculture affects everybody, industry affects everybody and we the traders are going to do the distribution and for that matter if they are been given incentive to produce more, it going to have positive impact on our trading activities.”
The government plan of reducing electricity tariffs through the PURC so that cost of doing business will come down was commended by the group. “Already industries are complaining about bank charges, so if government will help to bring some of the cost down, it will be of benefit to us all.”
“We are ready to do the distribution if the goods are produce and manufacture in Ghana,” he told the Daily Express.
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