The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPC), Mr. Yoofi Grant, has said that the government is considering various ways of ending the impasse between Nigerian retail traders and their Ghanaian counterparts.
“We want to create jobs for our people. How do we incentivize our retail traders to make them highly competitive? We are considering this because if our retailers are highly competitive no counterpart could distract them,” he stated.
The report by Joy news on Friday stated that the Ghana Union of Traders Association claimed that their members were recording losses due to the influx of Nigerian retail traders on the Ghanaian market, but that Mr. Grant attributed the losses to lack of competition.
Section 27(1) of the Ghana Investments Trade and Promotion Centre (GIPC) Act, Act 865 states that, “a person who is not a citizen or enterprise, which is not wholly owned by citizens shall not invest or participate in sale of goods or provision of service in a market, petty trading or hawking or selling of goods in a store.”
Meanhile, this provision, according to the Ghanaian traders, is being blatantly flouted by the Nigerians.
So far, the authorities from the Nigerian Union of Traders have ordered all Nigerians to re-open their shops, following the closed-door meetings with the Government of Ghana.
However, this development has been opposed by many groups, including the Abbosey Okai Spare Parts Association, the main spare parts selling enclave in Accra, calling on the government to either address the recurrent fracas between Nigerian and Ghanaian traders.
DAP/GIK/APA