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The total ban on the exports of scrap is not in the best of the nation, Mr Prince Mba, President of Forum for Equity has stated.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mr Mba said a series of meetings presided over by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, a cartel of Steel Mill Owners complained about the lack of raw materials and scrap of various categories like ferrous and non ferrous should be totally banned for them to achieve maximum production capacity.
“The issue of high cost of utilities , taxation and the lack of the appropriate technology for melting high carbon density metal was also raised.
“The challenges raised by the scrap dealers was low pricing for the scrap ,and the high cost of the finished products in the market”.
Mr Mba said the cartel of steel mills are also involved in the export of scrap materials under the pretext of waste materials.
He called for an intensive intervention of government by setting up industrial Productivity monitoring body to ensure compliance to marketing in the best interests of the policy implementation.
“We call for Metal Board to speed up our steel and scrap industry. In the absence of that, free universal market principles should be applied”.
He said Compliance of exports earnings repatriation should be strictly enforced.
“Controlling and banning scrap exports is counter productive and very inimical to our national development plan. We must not forget that without exports, we are sliding down to oblivion.”
