Preference For Exotic Products Killing Local Industries

Date published: September 24, 2014

By Mohammed Awal

awalm19@gmail.com

The Continuous preference of exotic products by Ghanaians to locally manufactured ones is seriously crippling the local manufacturing industries, the Administrative Manager of KPOGAS Standard Furniture, Christian Agyare, has said.

Corroborating these claims, Victor Cordell, a retired Professor of Fisher Graduate School, noted in his work titled: “The effects of consumer preferences for foreign sourced products,” said that in economically underdeveloped countries, preferences for domestic products always tends to be weaker, and Ghana is no exception.

As a result, there have been incessant pleas on Ghanaians to patronize goods and services made locally, so as to help local industries stay in operation, thus contributing to national economic development.

These calls have come as a result of the low interest Ghanaians have shown in patronizing local goods and services and the related challenge it poses to the country’s industrial development and ultimately economic development.

One such industry that has suffered most from this unquenchable taste for foreign goods and services is the furniture industry.

To understand the extent to which the Ghanaian furniture industry has been suffocated as a result of these unabated preference of exotic furniture to local ones, The Chronicle explores the views of some industry players.

The Administrative Manager of KPOGAS Standard Furniture, Christian Agyare, in an interview with The Chronicle yesterday, blamed the industry’s current slump on the attitude of the Ghanaian towards domestic products.

Asked whether he knows why Ghanaians prefer foreign furniture to what is being manufactured locally, he said: “Well there could be different reasons.” He, however, argues that most of them had to do with the finishing.

The finishing, he noted, gives the product its aesthetic qualities and Ghanaians tend to appreciate those aspects of a product, as against the locally manufactured ones, even though those may not be durable.

Apart from that, he observed that several years of colonialism is also a factor. “Colonialism has made it such a way that Ghanaians feel that once the thing is from outside it is better. That is really a mystery that I do not know,” bemoaned Mr. Agyare.

“Even if the thing is coming from Togo, the Ghanaian perception is that it is better, which unfortunately is not true,” he pointed out.

Reality

He said the general notion among some Ghanaians that the locally produced goods are inferior to the imported ones in terms of performance and quality, to the extent that local manufacturers have had to sometimes resort to claiming foreign origins for their products, so as to attract the public to purchase them, “is not just a notion but reality.”

Government’s directive

 On the government’s call that Ghanaians should cultivate the culture of patronizing products manufactured domestically, Mr. Agyare said the directive is a laudable one, only if it would be adhered to diligently.

“That is a very good directive and I believe that it will boost the local industries…we will be proud using our own locally manufactured products, thus deepening our identity us Ghanaians”, he said.

According to him, diligent adherence to the directive would bring about an improvement in the country’s economic development, helping stabilize the cedi against the dollar.

“This is good, instead of always importing – importing, importing. So it’s a good directive provided it would be adhered to.”

The president, during the last sectional address gave a directive that all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should patronize locally manufactured furniture.

 

Also, the Minister of Local Government, Julius Debrah said that strenuous adherence to the President’s directive would help stabilize the local currency which had witnessed momentous dip in value against the dollar and other major trading currencies.

“When you import any piece of furniture from outside, the first thing we suffer is that we need to exchange our currency for foreign ones [dollar] to be able to access it,” Mr. Debrah told myjoyonline.com

 “We are trying to appeal to the conscience of our people that if we can patronize our own [furniture], we would then be in the process of creating jobs for our citizenry and also saving hard earned foreign exchange,” he added.

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