Following the continuous surge of food inflation in the Upper West Region, many traders and consumers have been expressing concern about the situation.Various reasons have been attributed to the increasing prices of foodstuffs in the region.The region recorded 24.7% food inflation rate in April which was the highest amongst all the regions in the country for that month.Closely following were the Northern and Upper East regions recording 20.6% and 19.8% respectively.Even in overall inflation for January 2022, the region recorded 15.6%, second to Greater Accra.GhanaWeb's Upper West regional correspondent, Ilyaas Al-Hasan, spoke to some traders on the hike in inflation. Faatima Muhammad, a trader in Wa Municipal, while sharing her view attributed the increase in food prices to the purchasing of foodstuff and other items from neighbouring countries. She added that the high exchange rate also has a dire consequences on traders and the economy at large."Take tomatoes, rice and cooking oils for instance, which we buy from Burkina Faso, we don't use Cedis to buy the items. We change Cedis to their currency to be able to trade there and we all know how the Cedi keeps falling every now and then. You go and buy items and the next time you go again, the exchange rate goes up. So you see, when you bring the items you're also forced to increase the price of the item," she said.Another trader, Iddrisu Alhasan also cited the importation of food items as one of the reasons for high prices of foodstuffs in the region, however, believes the desire for abnormal profit margins by some traders is also a major cause."Some of us (traders) are simply greedy and selfish. The desire to make too much profit at the expense of the ordinary consumer is our bane. As business people, we like pricing items the way we want since there is no any kind of regulation to that effect," the business man lamented.Mark Ismail, also a trader in his opinion said the geographical location of the region is also another factor affecting the rising prices of food as well as food items in the region.He stated that because of the distance of the region, the cost of items brought in from the other part of the country obviously goes high, and sometimes too high due to the exorbitant transportation fares.He mentioned that, "It's not only food items but the price of every item here tends to keep soaring higher and higher. Because of the distance, the cost of transportation for goods is usually high and therefore leading to increase in prices. As you know, anytime fuel prices go up, transport operators also increase their charges which obviously increases the cost prices of our items.""And one thing is that since we don't cultivate everything we eat here, we'll always need to buy from southern Ghana and elsewhere to feed the region. If fuel prices are stable, that'll also help stabilise prices of foodstuffs," he added.The traders, therefore, called for a more conducive trading environment to reverse the trend to be able to attract more investors to the region.

Source: GhanawebÂ