According to him the high prices of goods on the market are reflective of the high costs of production which are the results of the low levels of production as well as the inflated costs of raw materials.

[contextly_sidebar id=”xCTDrV8bmlGsbAyuxL7YWqTpJoO2SOsC”]“Ghana is a high inflation country, largely because our productivity level is very low, which then tends to increase the unit cost of production. So whatever we produce, because the productivity is low, the production cost is high, costs of raw materials are high, so definitely it will eat into our final pricing,” Dr. Osei-Assibey said yesterday [Thursday].

He also noted that the increased preference of Ghanaians for imported raw materials for production and the depreciation of the cedi was driving up the cost of production.

“Our currency is weak compared to other currencies in neighbouring countries and once you have a weaker currency and you depend so much on imported raw materials, it goes to increase your production cost. Despite the fact that you have low wages due to excess labour, other factors are very high and that pushes up transaction costs and production costs,” he added.

Silver lining?

Despite these challenges, the government has been quick to tout its achievements in managing the economy and the gains attained despite the fact that it had inherited an economy in dire straits.

As evidence of the progress of the economy, President Akufo-Addo, delivering the State of the Nation address in February, cited the strong trajectory of the Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index in January 2018, which gained 19 percent in dollar terms, according to benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg.

The World Bank has also projected that Ghana’s economy will probably grow by 8.3 percent this year, which will be the fastest in the world in 2018.

The President expects these improving macroeconomic indicators to usher Ghana out of the International Monetary Fund programme later this year after his administration extended the 2015 programme.

“The good macroeconomic performance in 2017 will strongly support our successful completion of the IMF programme. We are determined to put in place measures to ensure irreversibility and sustained macroeconomic stability so that we will have no reason to seek again the assistance of that powerful global body.”

Beyond the strong economic indicators, President Nana Akufo-Addo said his economic management team had found imaginative ways to deal with the “oppressive debt situation” bringing relief to the country and rebuild the “annual average rate of debt accumulation as reduced from a high of 36 percent to 13.6 percent as at September 2017.”

“As a result of appropriate policy and the normalization of power situation in the country, [we]  have also engineered a spectacular revival of Ghanaian industry from a growth rate of negative 0.5 percent in 2016, to 17.5 percent in 2017,” he added.

President Akufo-Addo was, however, keen to stress that, the gains made on the economy from did not mean Ghana was out of the woods.

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post High living costs due to low productivity, import dependence – Economist appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

“As you all know Christmas is the time when poultry farmers sell a lot of chicken, be it broilers and especially spent layers. Unfortunately for us, the story on the table is that this Christmas our sales record was so bad. As we speak now there are hundreds of thousands of spent layers on our farms that should have been sold during Christmas which were not sold,” the spokesperson of the Association, John Bewuah Edusei said.

[contextly_sidebar id=”WnalQxx3yZax8LNTpoctK9FS7gBMUcik”]”The reason is the imported chicken which has been dumped on us. The dumping of imported chicken is destroying an industry that has the capability to provide so many jobs for our youths who are running up and down the country looking for jobs to do.”

The farmers have accused successive administrations of not doing enough to stop the continuous importation of chicken which has proven inimical to the poultry industry in Ghana.

“Government after government promises jobs and revamping the poultry industry, but we are seeing rather a serious decline and a possible collapse of an industry that was very vibrant,” he said.

“As I speak now, Ghana’s total poultry and chicken imports of about two hundred and fifty thousand metric tons works to a weekly production of 4.5 million kilo chicken production. What I mean is that if Ghanaian farmers were supposed to produce to feed our country with chicken, we are supposed to produce 4.5 million kilo chicken per week, and this is a huge job avenue, and work that is being thrown out there for people to bring in dumped chicken which nobody knows where it’s coming from.”

The Association also claims that high profile personalities, politicians and other business persons linked to the Presidency have been engaging in the importation of chicken, a development which they say threatens the local industry.

“We think it’s time government sits up and see to it, we know of people linked to the presidency, people linked to the council of state, people aligned with parliament and a few other businessmen who have made this their business and trying to bring in everything, at the expense of an industry that is dying and at the expense of an industry that has the ability to produce so many jobs for our youths. And this, we think is wrong.” John Bewuah Edusei added.

At a news conference in Kumasi, the Association called on the Deputy Minister Agriculture in charge of livestock to “sit up or resign.”

“We call on the government to sit up; we call on the ministry to sit up. As we speak now, we do not know the deputy minister who is in charge of us. We are told that there is somebody in the presidency that is in charge of livestock and we think that he is not doing his job,” Mr. Eduseo said.

“If he has any conscience we want him to resign because for a whole year in administration we have not had any interactions with him.”

John Bewuah Edusei further called on various stakeholders to rally behind the Ashanti Regional Association of Poultry Farmers to successfully bring an end to the situation.

“We are calling on the catholic bishop conference, they have done it before, they have called for government to review the fact that there is too many chicken coming into this country, we are calling on our doctors and nurses, we are calling on our parliamentarians, they represent us. We are calling on all professional bodies to rise up and fight with us, because we are eating something which sources we are not aware of and we think that it is wrong,” he added.

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By: Ann-Shirley Ziwu/Hafiz Tijani/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Poultry farmers blame poor Christmas sales on chicken imports appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.