World Bank charges Ghana to raise its consumer protection standards

The World Bank Group has charged the government of Ghana to urgently improve its consumer protection standards to promote the health, safety, and security of consumers.

The World Bank Group’s Senior Director of Global Practice on Trade and Competitiveness, Anabel Gonzalez, said the government must pay adequate attention to ridding Ghana’s market of fake and substandard goods to safeguard the well-being of its citizens.

The World Bank executive said “There is the need for a country to have consumer protection standards and I think this is very relevant to promote the health, safety, security of consumers”.

“What we have found in many places is that the problem lies more, sometimes, in the lack of a clear feeling for consumer protection. We have also seen lack of standard in Ghana particularly, the weak implementation of standards that already exist. Now, there is nothing in trade agreement which is incomparable in protecting consumer standards.”

She further asserted that “the Ghanaian government must also have investments, which is very necessary, for example, in laboratories and train personnel that may be able to actually verify compliance with those standards.”

She expressed the commitment of the World Bank group to train the Ghanaian government in the area of competitiveness in global practices, and aid her in setting up quality infrastructure that will support consumer protection objectives in Ghana.

Ghana, had on 4th January, 2017 became the 104th World Trade Organization (WTO) member to ratify the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), bringing the number of member countries needed to ratify the Agreement to six.

However, there have been growing concerns that Ghana's ratification of the TFA will result in an increase in the influx of substandard foreign products into the Ghanaian market and could in effect, impede the growth and survival of indigenous industries.

Speaking on the ratification issue, the World Bank representative, Anabel Gonzalez said: “Ghana recently ratified the trade facilitation agreement of the WTO. This is very important because if a country is going to engage in the global economy, by exporting more and importing more, you need to reduce trade cost, to make your customs more efficient. This also allows you to reduce the cost of duration of exports and imports.  One important thing is: the TFA will promote border coordination between government agencies and you need to put in place a risk management system which helps in the movement of goods.

And the trade facilitation agreement provides a very conducive umbrella to undertake a very important reform and we at the world stand ready to support Ghana in this area and I think this is one part which is very important in this area.”