Many people in Sunyani and the surrounding areas have pleaded with the government to implement regulated pricing of products and services to restrict the costs of commodities as a measure of relief for consumers in the nation.
They claimed that would stop traders and other service providers from escalating prices of goods and services arbitrarily to thwart government efforts to stabilize the economy. They claimed that even a small increase in the value of the US Dollar relative to the Ghana Cedi would prevent them from doing so.
It would be recalled in the past few months, the country was hit with economic challenges, which resulted to the rise in inflation and the Ghanaian Cedi facing its worse performance on the forex market and other factors that contributed to the sharp rise in prices of goods and other services across the country.
They made the plea in in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani, saying the refusal of traders to reduce the prices of items despite the Cedi appreciating at the forex market “is a great worry” impeding national economic progress.
The respondents believed the Cedi had started appreciating against the major foreign currencies, but “the prices of most goods and services are still at the hiked levels.”
Madam Elizabeth Yeboah, a public servant sharing her experience indicated, ”I am shocked prices of some commodities are still the same though the price of fuel has come down considerably and the Cedi is doing well against the foreign currencies in recent times.”
Mr George Ofori, also a public servant, appealed to the government to enact a law to compel wholesalers, retailers, and other services providers to regulate prices of goods and services as and when necessary.
He said that would be the determinant factor to control prices of commodities and services, saying, “we must have price floors and price ceilings” to control the system and not anybody randomly increasing prices of items because the foreign currencies had gone high.
Christian Ahianyo, a Senior High School student observed most people, especially traders and those who rendered services like drivers were becoming insensitive in the country because, “all they care about is increasing the prices of items and lorry fares without considering the plight of consumers.”
”I hope that they would heed the call of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo by reducing prices of goods and services to make socio-economic lives more bearable for Ghanaians,” he added.
But some of the respondents such as Madam Grace Afia Brago, a trader at the Sunyani central business district however, explained that a factor causing delay in reduction of commodities’ prices was that most of the commodities were purchased when the foreign currencies were high and therefore those stocks must finish before consumers could experience a better price drop.