The Director of CUTS International, Appiah Kusi Adomako, is urging the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to take a more proactive role in making market pricing more transparent for ordinary Ghanaians, particularly in the wake of the Ghana cedi’s recent rebound against major foreign currencies.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on May 12, 2025, Mr. Adomako called on the GSS to begin publishing benchmark prices for essential goods and services. He argued that this would help correct what he described as an “information asymmetry” between consumers and traders, where sellers have far greater knowledge of pricing structures, taxes, and profit margins than the average buyer.
“This is because currently, it is more like information asymmetry; the businessmen know more about the prices and the price buildup than the consumer,” he said. “If the GSS shows to the consumer that after adding taxes and merging to it, the bottle of water should not cost above GH¢6, that information would also cause the businesses to start coming closer to what the GSS has published.”
Mr. Adomako’s call follows an appeal from the Ghana Union of Traders’ Associations (GUTA), which last week encouraged its members to reduce prices in response to the improved macroeconomic conditions. While praising GUTA’s intention, he noted that the impact would depend largely on how much pricing information is made available to the public.
He proposed that the GSS go beyond its current role and begin tracking pricing structures from the ports, adding applicable taxes and standard profit margins to produce publicly accessible reference prices for items in the national consumption basket, those typically used in inflation calculations.
“So, in this period, we need to see the work of the Ghana Statistical Service in terms of price monitoring and price publication,” he emphasized.
By giving consumers access to this data, Adomako believes the market would naturally begin to self-correct, with businesses under pressure to justify their pricing or risk losing customers to more transparent competitors.
“The goal is not to set fixed prices,” he clarified, “but to empower consumers with the knowledge to make informed choices.”
