Trade Minister, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, has suspended a conformity assessment process used to verify that imported products to Ghana meet applicable standards.

He directed the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) to hold the Ghana Conformity Assessment Programme (G-CAP) until further notice on Wednesday.

Dr Spio-Garbrah made this statement when he met with Executives of Ghana Union Traders Association (GUTA) at his office yesterday.

Dr Spio-Garbrah said though the G-CAP is to focus on quality of products to check the influx of shoddy goods into the country, there was the need to deepen stakeholder consultations before implementation.

The Minister was of the view that the pre-xmas brisk season of importing, distributing and retailing was the wrong time of the year to introduce a controversial new measure into the economy. 

He indicated that a final decision would be announced very early in 2015 when adequate consultation and public education would have been endured with all stakeholders.

The Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) has been a strong advocate for the suspension of G-CAP.

GCCI says although it appreciates efforts aimed at preventing the importation of unsafe, substandard or counterfeit goods the implementation of the initiative should not proceed on the dark side of all stakeholders.

"The majority of the key stakeholders in Ghana were not involved in the decision-making process regarding the Product Conformity Assessment programme. When people are part of the design and implementation of policies they tend to respect and obey them because they understand the details", GCCI said.

Observing the all-male delegation who came to meet with him from GUTA, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah assured GUTA members of his commitment to help strengthen and empower women traders to move from table tops to shops, stores and factories.

He however challenged the executives of GUTA to also form partnerships among themselves in order to improve their capitalization and move into the manufacturing sectors. “It is better to have 25% stake in a multi-million cedis company than to be a 100% owner of a GH¢100,000 company” he added.

On the issue of protecting retail business, Dr. Spio-Garbrah said, there is no law that bans non-Ghanaians from retail business but rather the GIPC Act prohibits these non-Ghanaians  not to do “petty trading” in designated markets.

There is a whole lot of misconception as contained in the reportage of some newspapers and he therefore appealed to the media to give accurate interpretation of the GIPC Law 2013, Act 865.

“Following the meeting with Her Ladyship, the Chief Justice, it came out that we need to have a strong prosecution team who can gather hard evidence to prosecute those foreigners who are breaching Ghana’s laws. We cannot take people to court for prosecution only for them to be set free because we did not do our homework well. A team is being trained as prosecutors and when this is done, prosecution will start to serve as a deterrent to others”, he said.

On his part, Mr. George K. Ofori, President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), bemoaned the ejection of Ghanaian traders by Ghanaian landlords in favour of foreign nationals.

He said GUTA is not against investment by foreigners in Ghana, but rather against those doing petty trading in the designate markets to the disadvantage of the indegenes.

Mr. Ofori however appealed to the Minister to impress on the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to compel those foreigners who have removed inscriptions of their business names from their store fronts in order to hide their identity to display their company names as required by AMA bye-laws as a matter of urgency so as to fast-track the prosecution process.