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The government has been urged by the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) to make sure that the economic stability that was established in 2023 is strengthened in 2024.
According to GUTA President Joseph Obeng, this would eventually help Ghanaians by boosting businesses and enabling them to hire more young people.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, January 3, he made this statement.
In the words of Obeng, traders would pass on profits to customers by lowering the cost of goods on the market as soon as there was economic stability.
“The 26.4% inflation rate for November 2023 should not only be maintained, but improved, and the stability of the local currency sustained,” he said.
He said the business community would not want to experience the conditions of businesses in the last quarter of 2022, “because 2023 was comparatively good, as the currency was fairly stabilised and inflation reduced.”
“When that happens, businesses will recover speedily from the losses from the previous years, then we’ll boom and transfer the gains through the pricing we make, then the consumer can also have some respite,” he said.
In order to support the stability process, Dr. Obeng also urged the government to step up its efforts to obtain the second tranche of US$600 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The President of GUTA stated, “We’re hoping that the second tranche of the IMF money will also come through to sustain the stability.”
He demanded that businesses make a concerted effort to invest and make sure that they functioned in a way that allowed them to produce more at competitive prices and be ready for both domestic and international markets.
To do so, according to Dr. Obeng, measures to lower the cost of doing business in the nation and tax policies that are more business-friendly would need to be implemented.
Furthermore, he stated that retention policies ought to be in place to regulate the repatriation of profits by foreign entities operating in Ghana’s mining, oil and gas, and communication sectors.
“We can keep about 40% in the country as equity so that they don’t sell all their money away. When we do this, we would be able to control the depreciation of the cedi as well as inflation,” he noted.
On the upcoming general election, he advised the government to “be mindful that 2024 is an election year, therefore, we must control our expenditure. If we’re unable to do that, we shall experience a much bigger problem.”
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
