Coronavirus has exposed our local manufacturing industry – GUTA

President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), Dr. Joseph Obeng has stated that the outbreak of the global pandemic, coronavirus has exposed the deficiencies in the Ghanaian local manufacturing industry, adding that the country has been left badly exposed due to its reliance on other countries for essential goods and services.

According to Dr Obeng, the deadly disease which has led to a lockdown in certain parts of the world has led to a shortage of some goods and services.

The GUTA boss says they fact that there are genuine concerns that prices of some products will be hiked because of the lockdown in other countries shows that Ghana’s local industries do not meet even 10% of import requirement, making the country a heavy reliant on imported goods.

Goods mostly imported from China include electronics, raw materials for medicine, spare parts, other confectionaries among other commodities.

He also noted that the majority of manufacturers in Ghana get about 90 percent of their required materials for a project from outside the country and not from the local source.

In a phone interview with GhanaWeb's Ernestina Serwaa Asante, he bemoaned that “our import requirement that we need, we cannot get even 5 percent or 10 percent at the local sources or even within West Africa…we are talking about the electricals, tell me where I can get ceiling fans to buy in Ghana,…the transformers, other commodities like hardware, car spare parts. Majority of our needs are sourced from outside and even the manufactures in here, they depend on about 90% of their components or their inputs of manufacturing from China".

Experts are predicting that businesses may suffer as the government on Sunday, March 15, 2020 issued a temporal ban on travellers from countries that have recorded over 200 cases of coronavirus.

This announcement by Information Minister, Kojo Oppong follows four more cases recorded in the country making a total of 6 persons infected with the global pandemic, coronavirus.

"Any traveller except for Ghanaian citizen and persons with Ghana resident permits who within the last 14 days has been to a country that has recorded at least 200 cases of covid 19 will not be permitted in the Ghanaian jurisdiction," he stressed.

They have also instructed airlines not to allow persons from coronavirus prone areas to find their way into the country.

Meanwhile, the government has released a whopping $100 million to fight the coronavirus.