Some players in the creative industry have lamented the impact of the depreciating cedi and the high inflation on their operations in 2022.

According to them, events scheduled for the last two quarters of 2022 were put on hold due to the sudden withdrawal of sponsors.

Speaking on Joy Business Social, Head of communications, Event Vendors Association of Ghana, Richard Abbey Junior cited the impact of the economic downturn on businesses and the cedi depreciation as reasons corporate Ghana could not support the industry as compared to the previous years.

“We discovered at a point when the economic hardship began, some event organisers had to back out with the hope of returning next year. The cedi depreciation wasn’t helpful. It made purchases very difficult because of the astronomic rise in prices of goods and services”.

“You can tell it hasn’t been easy, even for corporate Ghana. This even affected some attendance of events.”

Corporate MC and Entrepreneur, Kabutey Occansey also lamented how inflation had badly affected revenue and budgets.

According to him, vendors had to increase their service charges to make up for the loss in value of the cedi to the dollar. 

“I have not changed my pricing since the last two years, but if somebody paid me a certain amount in 2018, obviously that amount is not the same; about one-third of that amount is completely gone due to inflation. Even the end of year corporate events were affected.”

Blogger and Social Media Influencer, Ameyaw Debrah, however called on event organisers to collaborate and support each other to ensure the goodwill the country is sustained whilst the ‘year of return’ programme brings in more revenue.