Middlemen, popularly called ‘Affair Boys’ on Wednesday, October 19, 2022, took over trading activities at the Abossey Okai Spare Parts Market to attend customers “partially” following the closure of shops by owners as directed by the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA).
Most shops were closed as of 9am but a few opened “partially” to engage middlemen who occasionally picked a few items for customers who came around.
The middlemen sat in front of the shops and intermittently dashed to attend to customers.
There is security presence at the Market enclave.
GUTA this week declared six-day industrial action to protest the deteriorating economic situation in the country.
At a press briefing ahead of the directive for its members to close their shops, the Association said the strike was to serve as a “pinch” on government to urgently address the depreciating cedi, high interest and inflation.
Another reason for the action is to make the consuming public understand that the astronomical increase in the prices of goods was not a deliberate ploy by the trading community.
GUTA’s recommendations includes the government streamlining the activities of forex bureaus as well as finding a way of roping the ‘black market’ into the forex bureau system and also adopting other alternative currencies like the Chinese Yuan to reduce the pressure on the United States Dollar.
The association wants an immediate implementation of the roadmap set out to flush out illegal foreigners in the retail trade sector and also make the tax system uniform and affordable in order to make compliance easy for businesses.
The association has also asked the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to reduce the monetary policy rate to an appreciable level to reduce the commercial lending rate and present a roadmap on how it would bring interest rate with realistic targets and periods.
GUTA also wants the BoG to immediately introduce caps on interest cost, including hidden costs that increase Annual Percentage Rates.
GNA
