Members of Food and Beverages Association of Ghana (FABAG) on Wednesday appealed to the Ghana Standards Board to completely cancel the proposed Ghana Conformity Assessment Programme (G-CAP).
They argue that the G-CAP would also make Ghana to be heavily in transit trade of goods to neighbouring countries especially from Ivory Coast and affect the Ghana Revenue Authority targets.
“In any case Ghana ranks higher than all the African countries practising the G-CAP in terms of restricting counterfeit and sub-Substandard goods and what do we stand to gain by going there?”
Mr John Awuni, a member of FABAG presented this in a day’s forum to state their position to participants on the impact of G-CAP in Accra.
The forum was also attended by members of the Association of Ghana Industries, Ghana Union of Traders Association, Ghana Automobile Dealers Association and Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders.
The rest are; Ghana Shippers Council, Ghana Pharmaceutical Chamber of Commerce, Private Enterprise Federation and Ghana Imports and Exporters Association.
Mr Awuni said Ghana is currently ranked 67th in the world in terms of conformity while countries such as Nigeria, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda among others that were using G-CAP were ranked between 125th and 150th in the world and wondered if that would rather not mar Ghana’s standards.
He added: “G-CAP is time consuming, problematic, expensive and will wipe out the small and medium scale traders who buy mixed goods from the open market as additional cost will be shifted to them.”
He explained that implementation of G-CAP would also be duplicating as they were already using the destination inspection regime.
Mr Awuni who is also the Corporate Affairs Director of the FINATRADE Group of Companies recommended to government under the Ghana Standards Authority to enforce laws by arresting and prosecuting people engaged in the trade of substandard goods.
He appealed to them to develop and harmonize standards in the subregion and conduct research on the levels and kinds of substandard goods in the country and improve on and strengthen border controls.
The G-CAP, which was proposed to become operational on October 1 this year, had to be suspended on account of teething challenges within stakeholders and the implementation bodies.
