The General Secretary of the Automobile Dealers Union, Clifford Ansu, has asked the government to be more lenient in its plan to ban salvaged vehicles and used vehicles older than 10 years.
Speaking on Citi TV‘s The Point of View, Mr. Ansu said: “trotros and trucks should be excluded because for those ones if they are less than 10 years, you cannot buy them in Europe or Korea and bring them here.”
“They are expensive,” he said.
Among other things, Mr. Ansu said his union also wanted clarity on what constituted a salvaged vehicle.
He also feels the government could be more flexible in its definitions.
“If you don’t take time, at the end of the day, when you go to Tema Habour, the customs officer will tell you that what is on the paper is what I am going to deal with so we want clarification there.”
According to a joint report from Parliament’s joint committee on Finance and Trade, Industry and Tourism, a salvaged vehicle has been defined as one “which has been wrecked, destroyed or physically damaged by collision, fire, water or other occurrences and does not have a clean title”.
Mr. Ansu concluded by saying “we are pleading with the government to consider the input we have made so far.”
Details of plans to ban the importation of older vehicles into Ghana are captured in the Customs Amendment Bill which is a key step in the government’s Automotive Development Policy.
Ghana put in place the Automotive Development Policy to provide the necessary framework to establish assembly and manufacturing capacity in Ghana.
Toyota, Suzuki, Volkswagen, Nissan and Sinotruk are among the major automobile companies with an interest in Ghana, with some set to begin operations in 2020.
The Akufo-Addo administration wants the Ghana Automotive Manufacturing Development Programme to boost employment and offer an import substitution and export promotion to improve the balance of payment.
Amid the fears over job losses and a potential revenue drop by GHS802 over the next three years, the government said it has plans to make second-hand car dealers distributors of the cars assembled in Ghana by international automobile firms.