Director of Investor Services at the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Edward Ashong-Lartey, has asked local businesses to gauge their global acceptance level in order to compete locally with other foreign businesses.
He indicated that usually poor quality and packaging of local products have been the bane of most local products that lose out to foreign ones on the Ghanaian market.
He urged local businesses to pay more attention to the packaging and quality in order to gain global recognition.
“If you can compete at home then you can compete abroad. For that reason you must be able to compete at home where we have a liberalized market made up of all these imports,” he stressed.
Mr Ashong-Lartey disclosed this while speaking at a business seminar held on the sidelines of the 23rd edition of the Ghana Trade Fair Thursday in Accra.
The seminar held under the theme: “Made in Ghana, Globally Accepted” focused on quality standards for export products, export opportunities and packaging of export products.
It was attended by representatives from some government agencies such as Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), GIPC, Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).
Present were other sister government agencies from Nigeria and representatives from the private sector and strategic stakeholders in the export ecosystem.
The Business Development Executive of GS1 Ghana, Linda Godji, stressed the importance of barcode in international trade.
He said though barcodes are not mandatory locally, they are requirements for some export products.
She also revealed that most local products fail to find space on the shelves of foreign-owned supermarkets in the country due to the absence of genuine barcodes that have been globally accepted.
President of the Federation of Association of Ghanaian Exporters, Anthony Sikpa, said market research was necessary for developing packages that would meet the requirements and satisfy the needs of the new market.
He, therefore, urged the GIPC and other sister agencies to focus on building the capacities of local companies who want to engage in joint ventures with other foreign companies that have expressed interest in local products.
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