The Food and Beverages Association will soon publish the number of taxes its members have been paying, saying, the taxes are overburdening their businesses which could force some of them out of business.
According to its Executive Director, Sam Aggrey, Ghana is the only country in West Africa with businesses paying import duty of more than 50%.
Speaking to Joy Business on the impact of the depreciation cedi on operations of members, Mr. Aggrey said the situation is killing local businesses.
“All over the places, the amount of money we are paying for imports alone is so huge. If you look at the West Africa zone, Ghana is the only country that is paying duty above 50%. If you put it all together we can’t stand it.”
“Government will then have to sit down and look at some of the situations as they were. Otherwise, I’m sorry, most of these businesses will have to close down and wait until such a time that business can really roll back and get into production”.
Mr. Aggrey also said though he’s upbeat about specific strategies targeted at stabilising the cedi, the government must slow down its borrowing to reduce the huge interest payments being serviced
“Now, if you look at government’s own borrowing, and the inflows of bills [treasury] that were bought, interest are being paid and therefore government itself need the dollar so much that businesses cannot compete with government. So we are all going into the same area of borrowing or harnessing these little dollars we have to pay back; whatever government is intending to pay this foreign borrowing and all that”.
“So, if the government does not take care and still wants to borrow, these are things that we are going to face. And therefore perhaps maybe what we can do is either we go to the World Bank, the IMF, or our creditors to tell them to suspend [our debts] for a year so that at least we can spend the little dollars we have within our sector”, he explained.
“Otherwise, we will get the dollars and still government will, in turn, send it back to these creditors which will not be the best to do”, Mr. Aggrey added
