The Member of Parliament for Akyem Swedru Constituency, Hon. Kennedy Osei Nyarko, has questioned why Government continues to pump foreign exchange into the market when importers and traders are not passing on the benefits to ordinary Ghanaians.
According to him, importers and traders are the greatest beneficiaries of all the FX interventions, yet they are not willing to transfer the gains to consumers.
“If importers and traders who are the greatest beneficiaries of all these FX interventions are not willing to pass on the benefits to the ordinary citizens, why then should the Government continue to pump in more FX into the market at the expense of the country’s reserves?” he quizzed.
He added: “The Ghanaian is a born bad person and will continue to make huge profits at the expense of the ordinary consumers.”
Hon. Nyarko recalled that when the Akufo-Addo Government introduced the 50% Benchmark Values at the port, the objective was to cut down import duties so that importers could transfer the lower costs to ordinary consumers.
“But what did we see? They rather kept the prices at the same rate and even in most cases increased their prices and made huge profits with the flimsy excuse that they were dealing with their old stocks in their warehouses. No Ghanaian consumer benefited from the 50% Benchmark Values, yet the state was losing billions of cedis at the ports just to bring down costs of import duties,” he said.
He noted that the same situation is happening today, where Government is pumping billions of dollars into the market to assist importers, yet they have failed to transfer the benefits to the ordinary Ghanaian whilst the country’s forex reserves shrink.