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28.04.2015 Business & Finance

Copycats ruining Ghanaian businesses - Michael Agyekum Addo laments

By MyJoyOnline
Copycats ruining Ghanaian businesses - Michael Agyekum Addo laments
28.04.2015 LISTEN

CEO of Kama Group Ltd Dr. Michael Agyekum Addo has used a true-life story to illustrate how the lack of protection for licensed business ideas and products is having a crushing impact on creative entrepreneurs.

Speaking at a breakfast meeting of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry, broadcast live on Joy FM, Dr. Agyekum Addo recalled how his pharmaceutical company produced and licensed a blood tonic product but faced serious threat from a producer who simply copied and produced fake versions of the product.

He told his fellow CEOs on Monday that a Ghanaian lady had copied the labels and colour combinations of his product in shocking detail.

The label of the unlicensed product read ‘Made by Kama Industries in Ghana’ although it was imported from China.

The lady had imported a container load of the product and stored them in a warehouse in Accra.

“So how can you detect it?” the pharmacist-turned businessman asked with shock.

“It was only through the pharmaco-vigilance group of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) that it was detected,” he said.

After laboratory tests at FDA “it was realized that there was nothing in the one imported which means that if you took it, your disease will still be there”.

In a one and a six months trial, the lady was asked to pay 8,000 cedis. The CEO feels the ruling was unjust because according to the law any person convicted of such an offence was liable to pay 7,500 penalty units.

This penalty worked out as 90,000 cedis.
He found the ruling “demoralizing” because it was definitely a disincentive in the quest of state agencies to rid the markets of fake products.

“We are all becoming copy cats…..people can just copy anybody’s work. Trademarks are not followed…products and services are just copied anywhere”, Dr. Agyekum Addo lamented.

He pleaded with the Ghana Chamber of Commerce to take up the fight to ensure that entrepreneurs who are creative are protected and rewarded for their creativity.

He recalled how promising businesses such as water bottling company ‘Insu’, and fruit juice product, ‘Refresh’ have vanished from the market because among other factors competition had become stiff.

He challenged the Chamber to do more to protect the businesses of its members from fake products.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline|Edwin Appiah|[email protected]

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