Reserve 40% for local printers - GPPCA

THE Ghana Printing and Paper Converters Association (GPPCA) has appealed to the government to initiate measures to ensure that 40 per cent of printing and supply of books by the state is reserved for local printers.

According to the association, some publishers, in pursuit of short-term profit, had been using the excuse that local printers did not have the capacity to execute local contracts to do their jobs outside the country.

The President of the association, Mr James Appiah Berko, made the appeal when a delegation from the association paid a courtesy call on the Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, in his office in Accra on Monday.

According to Mr Berko, print quality had improved tremendously, culminating in the country becoming one of the three most efficient countries in the world in the printing and delivery of its own electoral materials.

However, he said the high cost of doing business in the country had made it difficult for local printers to win contracts, while foreigners were being allowed to import textbooks and other learning materials on which they paid no taxes.

“The high cost of doing business has made members of the association vulnerable, giving successive governments the opportunity not to patronise our services”, Mr Berko said.

He indicated that whereas the association had, at various fora, articulated its views, built the capacity of members and invested heavily in machinery and equipment as a way to attract government’s needed attention, publishers appeared to have succeeded in their claims that local printers lacked capacity to deliver on contracts.

The situation, he said, accounted for the fact that people who had graduated in Printing and Publishing Studies had turned to banking and other immediate employable ventures.

While courting the support of the GCGL to spearhead an advocacy regime for the association, Mr Berko expressed the hope that the incoming Minister of Education would adequately work towards resolving the numerous challenges that plagued the local printing industry.

He was hopeful that the Minister designate for Education, Mr Lee Ocran, would spearhead the crusade to empower local industries, expecially printers, to undertake jobs that would help them grow and be more competitive on the international market.

He said unless the situation changed and local printers were offered more jobs, the country would use its scarce resources to finance the economies of other countries.

Responding, Mr Ashigbey indicated that the growth of every country’s economy depended largely on public-private partnerships.

“We cannot develop our country only on commerce and industry, hence the need to focus on a wider development growth,” he said.

While pledging his support to the cause of the association, Mr Ashigbey also tasked the members to put in place capacity development programmes to make them efficient.

Present at the meeting were the General Manager of Graphic Packaging (G-Pak), a subsidiary of the GCGL, Mr Charles Antwi, and the Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Ransford Tetteh.

SOURCE: Della Russel Ocloo, Daily Graphic, Tue Feb 15, 2012