Ban Rice Imports? Yes, But …

Date published: March 10, 2014
 
 
Reports from Parliament last week indicated that government was contemplating placing a ban on the importation of rice and poultry.

Moving a motion on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday to thank President John Dramani Mahama for his February 25th State of the Nation address, Trade & Industry Minister Haruna Iddrisu said government would soon legislate a policy that would protect local industry and at same time make Ghana a net exporter of food.

'I have often heard the argument: 'why not ban importation of rice and poultry?' We are ready to do so as a government, when we set up an institutional infrastructure which will see to the establishment of international trade commission, to deal with the matters of anti-dumping. Very soon, we will lay before this House a bill to address that particular challenge', the Minister disclosed.

Figures from the Ministry of Trade & Industry reveal that the country spends between US$500 million and US$600 million annually on the importation of rice and poultry, even though Ghana has the needed capacity to meet our needs in that direction.

The Minister gave the specific annual bills for rice in the past three years as US$374m (2013), US$359m (2012) and US$384m (2011) while those for poultry for the same period were US$169.2m (2013), US$196m (2012) and US$184m (2011).

'The above statistics must necessarily spur us to rise to the challenge of economic transformation because we have the capacity to produce rice and develop our poultry industry as a value chain; we have done it before during the Acheampong era and we can do it again', Minister Iddrisu stressed.

Given such volumes, it makes sense to The Chronicle for Ghana, with a more or less mono-crop economy, whose capacity to generate the foreign exchange with which these imports are made are desultory at best, to ban the importation of rice and poultry.

But we must be careful and not put the cart before the horse. Any premature ban before local capacity has been created would be disastrous; it would encourage smuggling and at the same time escalate prices.

And how is the local capacity going to be created? Are we going to resuscitate collapsed industries or are we going to set up new ones and on what terms?

The Minister's motion alluded to the establishment of an International Trade Commission to deal with matters of anti-dumping.

What would it be doing for us? If it is to curtail end our criminal subservience to World Trade Organisation rules, then it is welcome.

The Chronicle fails to see any justification for our inclination, in trade issues especially, to be more Catholic than the Pope.

When last year the Chinese almost threw Euro zone solar panel manufacturers out of business with their equally efficient but cheaper solar panels, the Europeans unilaterally imposed a differential import duty on Chinese panels. Eventually a quota was imposed on what quantity of Chinese solar panels could get into Europe.

Over here our textile industry is collapsing due to Chinese dumping of pirated Ghanaian textile designs. When the Trade & Industry Ministry summoned the courage to put together a taskforce to enforce already agreed guidelines, a powerful woman in government reportedly ordered the taskforce disbanded.

Rice importers would soon start lobbying the high and mighty in government and this laudable plan to make Ghana a net exporter of food would soon hit the rocks and be allowed to rot there.

May God Almighty not allow such criminal negligence against Mother Ghana. Amen!