Member of parliament for Bole-Bamboi and ranking member on trades committee, Yusif Sulemana, has revealed that the bill to restrict the importation of certain commodities before parliament contradicts some IMF conditionalities.

According to him, the bill in its current form will not augur well for importers, and especially for Ghanaians who will bear the brunt of the imposition if it goes through parliament successfully.

Currently, Mr Sulemana revealed that the World Bank is urging parliament not to lay the bill. However, he stated that some legislators are “telling the World Bank that they haven’t laid it when in actual fact even yesterday, the minister was on the floor trying to lay it”.

“Again, this bill in this state, as I speak, is against one of the conditions of the IMF. We are going round saying they should give us $600 million. If you look at their staff report, page 75, it says that there should not be any restrictions on such commodities…”
Yusif Sulemana

Elaborating on the minority’s reasons for kicking against the bill, Mr Sulemana stated that the trades minister, KT Hammond, did not follow the right process in laying the bill. He indicated that under normal circumstances, before a member of parliament comes to lay a legislative instrument, he engages in pre-laying.

Mr Sulemana explained that the reason is because once a legislative instrument is laid, parliament cannot make any significant changes to it.

“So, what you normally will do is to first bounce it with the mother committee, in this case, the trades and industry committee. Unfortunately, Honorable K.T Hammond decided not to involve the trade committee.
“We are still wondering why he did not tell us. We think that if he had brought it to us, we would have made significant changes to it – perhaps, that wouldn’t have also inured to his benefit.”
Yusif Sulemana

Challenges with import restriction bill

Furthermore, Mr Sulemana noted that the bill is bound to give undue power to the trades minister. He highlighted that section 13 of the L.I makes K.T Hammond the only person who has the right to grant a permit or refuse a permit even though he’s going to set up an eleven-member committee.

“Now, that eleven-member committee, he’s the one to appoint all of them, and four of them form a quorum to be able to make such decisions. Now, that committee is just an advisory committee… Clearly, there’s no need even setting up that committee. So, we’re saying that it’s going to give him so much powers and once he has such powers, the next thing is corruption because you abuse the power…”
Yusif Sulemana

Moreover, the Bole-Bamboi legislator contended that Ghana does not have the capacity to produce the commodities to be restricted. For instance, he underscored that the local production of rice in the country is at a measly 4%.

“… So, what we expect is that let us know the data. What is the quantity of local rice we are able to produce? What is the tonnage of sugar we are able to produce? Once we know that, we can now say we are going to restrict based on strength in terms of our local capacity in producing these commodities – all these information is not available. The minister is just interested in pushing this down our throat and we think this is problematic.”
Yusif Sulemana

Meanwhile, Mr Sulemana revealed that when people are able to pay money to get the permits for import, such cost will be later transferred to the consumers to pay. With this, he noted that Ghanaians are already suffering in the current economy, as such, government cannot overburden them with such excesses.

“So, ultimately, it is the Ghanaian consumer who is going to suffer and that’s why we are saying that we represent the people, we will not allow Ghanaians to suffer… We cannot sit and allow [government] to add on to this hardship. So, we are saying that there’s going to abuse of the system given the arrangement…”
Yusif Sulemana