Save Local Industries
08 June 2010
Boosting the quality of Ghanaian products for them to become competitive in the local and global markets should be a top priority and a challenge not only to the business community but to the government as well.
The Government as a major partner in the development of the private sector has the peculiar responsibility to assist and protect local industries and shelter them against unfair foreign competition by adopting policies that will defend and uphold the long term interests of the country's economy.
Protectionism is not definitely the wave of the future. Yet, every country and every government, big or small, is practically keen to protect their local industries against foreign competitors, particularly when they threaten to push the latter out of the market and take their share of the market away.
Even the most ardent supporters of free trade sometimes adopt projectionist measures to ensure the survival of local infant industries. There is nowhere in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules which debars developing countries from protecting their local and infant industries.
In fact, no country in the world can develop its economy without enjoying government protection and support in one way or another. By definition, protectionism entails government policies that favour local products over imported ones.
Such a policy is pursued in the interest of local industries and against the aggressive and often unfair competition from abroad and that might undermine local producers by underselling them or through various price manipulations.
Even today, the projectionist policies pursued by some European contries to support their farmers by providing them with heavy subsidies so that they could withstand competition from abroad. That is why these protectionist measures favour European farmers whilst damaging farm products from the developing countries.
Generally speaking, government protection for infant industries against powerful and even crushing competition from well-established foreign competitors is not only legitimate but also in the long term interest of local producers. This is a matter of sailing or sinking in this modern world of fierce global competition.
All said and done, the Ghanaian private sector and its partners and organisations should equally take concrete measures to boost the competitiveness and quality of their local products not only in the country and the West Africa Sub-Region but on the international market as well.
Government support should, therefore, focus on specific measures or areas that would enable private enterprises achieve greater productivity to beome more competitive both in and outside the country.
The details and modalities of such suport should be seriously studied, discussed and presented to the government and this task falls on the shoulders of Association of Ghana Industries, Private Enterprise Foundation, Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well as organised labour.
We have to be very serious about our industrialisation programmes if we want to survive as a nation.
It must be noted that if efforts are not made to protect our local industries in a very competitive world, a time may soon come when the country will not be able to boast of a single manufacturing entity capable of also reducing the unemployment problem in the country.
Source: Graphic Business (June 8, 2010)