The Ghana Leather Manufacturers Association has mounted intense regulatory pressure on the government to eliminate import duties on crucial raw materials used across the leather industry.

They argue that the existing tax regime is aggressively inflating production costs and systematically destroying the competitiveness of local manufacturers.

Addressing a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, the President of the Association, Mr Gilbert Akwasi Ntim, exposed a glaring structural injustice in the country's border tax regime.

He stated that it is utterly unjust for imported finished leather products to attract significantly lower taxes than the raw materials required by local manufacturers to produce similar goods.

According to him, this bizarre fiscal disparity places local businesses at a severe commercial disadvantage, making it practically impossible for them to compete with cheap, imported products flooded onto the local market.

Mr Ntim argued that a swift, decisive intervention by state managers to slash import duties on raw materials down to zero per cent would drastically trigger a downward shift in production costs, supercharge local manufacturing capacities, and unlock massive opportunities for structural growth within the leather sector.

Outlining the expansionist capacity of the local workforce, the Association President noted:

“If the government gives us the zero per cent duty as a raw material input/output, then we can also lower our production costs so that we can fill the entire continent with the Ghanaian-made footwear because we can produce it for the schools; we can produce it for the military or the state agencies. The Ghanaian footwear industry has the capacity to feed the Ghanaian people and also protect our economy and contribute significantly to the national GDP growth,” he stressed.

He further emphasised that such a progressive policy shift would breathe life into Ghana's overarching industrialisation agenda by actively encouraging local value addition and throwing a financial lifeline to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) currently struggling to survive within the leather ecosystem.

Consequently, the Association has issued a direct appeal to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Finance to comprehensively review the existing tax structure and provide immediate customs relief for indigenous manufacturers.

Mr Ntim signed off the briefing with an uncompromising warning, declaring that members of the Association would not sit aloof and watch their businesses collapse and are fully prepared to scale up their agitation if state authorities ignore their plight.

Critiquing the nation's current export-import disparities, he fired back:

“As a country, we export over 40 million US dollars to China, and we import poverty back home to collapse the local footwear industry. So we are telling the GRA that we will not stop here, and we are telling the government, especially the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Finance, that if they refuse to hear our pains, they will hear our boots on the streets,” he cautioned heavily.

The Ghana Leather Manufacturers Association remains firm in its position, maintaining that fundamental reforms to the import duty regime are the only viable path to boosting the competitiveness of locally manufactured leather goods, securing thousands of industrial jobs, and safeguarding the long-term economic development of the sector.