The Rice Millers Association of Ghana has described government’s intervention in reducing the benchmark value policy from 50% to 30% for general goods and from 30% to 10% import discount on vehicles, as a political move that goes against the country’s industrialization agenda.
According to the Association, the benchmark value reduction policy made imported rice cheaper by 25%, thus contributing to the uncompetitiveness of local rice on the market, arguing that the move will ultimately collapse the local rice industry.
The Association had long advocated for a reversal of the discount, as they argued that the implementation of the 50% benchmark policy over the last two years has led to the shutdown of a number of local rice mills.
Local rice farmers in 2019 began to gain some ground after the Ghana Rice Campaign was spearheaded by CEO of Citi FM and Citi TV, Samuel Attah-Mensah.
However, the policy was introduced in that same year. The news of the reversal of the policy announced in the 2022 budget was therefore welcomed by local rice farmers who were hopeful of fair competition.
They now argue that their hopes of growing the local rice industry have once again been dashed with government’s latest decision to implement a 30 percent discount on all goods and a 10 percent on vehicles.
Convener of the rice millers association of Ghana, Yaw Adu Poku said, members of his association will continue to do all they can to protect the local rice industry.
“The country needs the kind of attitude where that one billion dollar worth of rice that is imported into the country should shift to the local economy, that will immediately put about seven to eight billion cedis into the Ghanaian economy, and it will go all the way from the farmer to the distributor, just imagine it and then the pride of eating your own made in Ghana rice, a variety that has been improved upon by the academicians. Let the people feel proud eating made in Ghana rice”.
“We are not opposing government, we are not trying to fight government. We are simply telling the government that it is not a good policy, so scrap it and keep the revenue it is giving away,” he noted.
In a related development, the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has also rejected the reduction of the benchmark value policy on general goods from 50% to 30% as well as the import discount on vehicles from 30% to 10%.
The Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the AGI, Mr Tsonam Cleanse Akpeloo, is questioning the new revision by government, adding that the AGI was not engaged on the matter.
’We have been calling for the total reversal of the benchmark value because per the calculations, that is the only way we can begin to get the economy back on track. You realize in recent times that the cedi has been depreciating against the dollar and the reasons are simple because your incentivising your importation of finished products.
“So now its more lucrative to import and its making the local economy suffer because, it is only when you expand your local production and actually even export that will improve your currency value and so on. Government should consider totally reversing the benchmark value, that way, all of us in the country will begin to be excited and be happy in building the nation Ghana together,’’ he stated.
Source: NorvanReport
