The Ghana Printers and Paper Converters Association has appealed to government to implement the 60 per cent procurement quota of textbooks reserved for local printers. This, the association said, was in line with a policy by the Ministry of Education in 2002 which provided that 60 percent of all government textbooks to be procured by the ministry should be manufactured in Ghana by 2005. The president of the association, Mr James Appiah Berkoh Snr said the implementation of the policy would generate massive employment of local labour, improve government tax revenue and help conserve foreign exchange. The association made the appeal when its leadership paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Education in Accra. Mr Appiah spoke about the disparities between local printers and importers of text books saying, “Currently local printers pay over 32-and-half per cent taxes and VAT/NHIL on their inputs for producing books locally whilst the foreign printed books are tax exempt at the port of entry.” He said this puts the locally printed books at a disadvantage when it comes to competitive bidding for printing jobs. “The protection of foreign printed books over locally produced books has really impacted negatively on the domestic printing industry," he said. Mr Berkoh said the situation had worsened the plight of the local printing industry leading to a layoff of workers and huge financial problems. Giving the background to the 60 per cent quota policy, he said it was initiated after a series of stakeholders meetings. He said most members have met the condition of upgrading their printing capacity by investing millions of dollars in state-of-the-art equipment. He said the stalemate over the policy had adversely affected the local printing industry since their huge investments in modern equipment have not yielded any returns while their bank loans for the investments had been attracting interest at a rate of over 30 per cent. The Executive Secretary of the association, William Turkson, requested the ministry to purchase all exercise books to be supplied to school children through the association. “Members of the association, have large underutilised capacity of installed exercise books making machines throughout the country,” he said and added it would furnish the ministry with the list of members who are ready to print the textbooks and the exercise books. The Minister of Education, Alex Tettey-Enyo, noted that the local printing industry, when well organised could help in the socio-economic development of the country and asked the printers to work closely with his office for the development of education. He said that there were plans to review the textbook production and distribution policy to make it more relevant to the present situation and asked the association to come out with strategies to reduce their cost of production. Source: The Ghanaian Times