CUTS Warns Over Extended Delay in Consumer Law Passage

Daftar Isi

The Urgent Need for Consumer Protection and Competition Laws in Ghana

A prominent policy think tank, CUTS International Accra, has expressed significant concerns over the prolonged delay in enacting a Consumer Protection Law and a Competition Law in Ghana. These concerns were highlighted during the launch of the book Consumer Rights and Justice in Ghana: A Legal Compass, authored by Francisca Kusi Appiah, Vice Dean of the UPSA Law Faculty.

The event was held on the eve of World Competition Day, which is observed on December 5 to commemorate the adoption of the United Nations Set of Rules on Restrictive Business Practices in 1980. The ceremony was chaired by Professor Justice Samuel Kofi Date-Bah, who contributed the foreword to the book.

During the launch, Mr. Appiah Kusi Adomako, Director for the West Africa Regional Centre for CUTS International, emphasized that the delay in passing these two laws has become a pressing issue for consumers, businesses, and investors. He stressed the importance of having a unified legal framework to protect consumer rights and regulate market behavior. According to him, the absence of these laws has created a legal vacuum that leaves consumers vulnerable and markets unregulated.

He pointed out that the prolonged delay undermines public trust and exposes citizens to risks in their daily transactions. Without a robust consumer protection system, key rights such as the right to safety, the right to information, the right to choose, the right to be heard, the right to redress, the right to consumer education, and the right to fair value are often violated across various sectors.

Mr. Adomako cited a recent study by CUTS that revealed issues like price exploitation, misleading information, substandard goods, and weak redress mechanisms in essential service sectors. He emphasized that consumers should not have to rely on theoretical rights but should experience them in practice. For instance, a mother buying food products should trust the labels, a patient visiting a clinic should feel safe, and a mobile money user should not struggle to reverse transactions when systems fail.

In addition to consumer protection, Mr. Adomako underscored the necessity of a competition law to guide market behavior. He noted that the Ghanaian market has become susceptible to anti-competitive practices such as price fixing, output control, collusive arrangements, and abuse of dominance. He warned that some trade associations have moved beyond advocacy into price coordination, which harms both competition and consumers.

He pointed out that Ghana lacks a general law criminalizing cartels, except for the downstream petroleum sector under Section 44 (3) of the National Petroleum Authority Act 2005. This gap allows anti-competitive conduct to persist without deterrents. He argued that competition regulation is crucial to safeguard innovation, entry, fair pricing, and equal opportunities for firms.

Mr. Adomako also highlighted the risks posed by mergers and acquisitions in the retail and pay TV markets, which could lead to the formation of dominant groups without oversight. He advocated for a merger control framework to prevent excessive market power and protect smaller players. “We need competitive markets for fairness,” he said. “Ghana must not wait for a crisis to act.”

The book’s central argument aligns with these concerns, as it critiques the fragmented nature of consumer protection laws in Ghana. It reviews fifty years of legal development and illustrates how consumer laws and regulations are spread across multiple statutes and agencies. These agencies, such as the GSA, FDA, NPA, BOG, PURC, and NCA, only protect consumers within their specific sector mandates.

The book provides a detailed sector analysis covering goods, food, pharmaceuticals, utilities, waste, housing, telecom, finance, insurance, health, transport, tourism, and e-commerce. It highlights real-world challenges such as defective goods, false labels, expired products, power billing disputes, data privacy breaches, ATM reversal failures, and difficulties in recovering funds after service failure.

Mr. Adomako described the book as a milestone, emphasizing that it fills a critical gap and offers a blueprint for reform. He encouraged policymakers, business leaders, regulators, civil society, and academic institutions to engage with the text and advocate for the urgent revision and passage of the Consumer Protection Bill and a Competition Law.