Work on Consumer Protection Bill to be completed soon

The Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr Murtala Mohammed, has said the Ministry was expecting work on the passage of the Consumer Protection Bill to be completed within the next few months.

He said it was putting together the final documents, after which it would be taken to Cabinet and subsequently to Parliament for approval.

“We hired a consultant who had done a tremendous work and also involved the stakeholders and consumer interest groups. We will soon take it to cabinet then proceed to parliament,” he said.

The Deputy Minister said this in an interview with the Daily Graphic at the 5TH Steering Committee meeting of the Trade Related Assistance Quality Enabling (TRAQUE) programme. 

He said the bill was geared towards protecting the interest of the consumer at a time Ghanaians were expected to buy made in Ghana goods.

“We equally think that they must not just buy the goods but buy goods that equally conform to certain standards,” he further stated.

 Also, he said the bill would ensure that manufacturers produce goods that conform to international standards which would eventually help them break into the international market.

TRAQUE programme

The Head of Cooperation of the European Delegation to Ghana, Mr Ignacio Burrull, said the TRAQUE programme reflected the important role that trade represented in the relationship between the EU and Ghana and also emphasised how quality infrastructure was a necessary condition for trade facilitation and promotion.

He said since the last steering committee meeting a year ago, he had noticed a growing programme in the TRAQUE programme and a better visibility for the activities and outcomes achieved by the programme.

He noted that the objective of the programme was to support Ghana to tap into the opportunities of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) whose implementation is expected to start in October this year.

He said the EPA accompanying measures and strategy had been developed and presented to the main stakeholders and it was in line with the Private Sector Development Strategy (PSDS ii) adopted by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 2010.

“TRAQUE is already supporting the EPA strategy by improving the quality infrastructure in Ghana,” he said.

Tremendous gains

Mr Murtala Mohammed said the country was making tremendous gains through interventions such as the TRAQUE programme.

“Intra trade between the West African sub-region is around 12 per cent but trade between Ghana and our neighbours is around 36 per cent. This boils down to some of the interventions like TRAQUE,” he stated. 

He said the programme continued to extend its tentacles to conduct training on statistics, data analysis and export enterprise development for staff of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority and supported the development of a Mango manual.

He added that a Human Resource Management Information System had been generated for the human resource division of the Ministry of Trade and Industry to develop and maintain a data base of staff movement and career. — GB