INDUSTRIALISTS ATTEND WORKSHOP ON USE OF BAR-CODES (PAGE 20)

MORE than 50 people engaged in trade and industry in the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolis have undergone a day’s workshop to educate themselves on the use of bar-codes in their businesses.
Bar-codes provide important information that can be read with the aid of an electronic scanner in order to appreciate the product’s characteristics such as the country of origin, the name and address of the manufacturer, the nature of the product, batch number and shipping location.
Bar-codes are simple vertical, black and white lines that are found every day on product packages whether locally manufactured or imported.
Though very simple and apparently insignificant to the consumer they, however, constitute a powerful technological tool in both local and international trade and industry.
The workshop, which is an important aspect of the Trade Sector Support Programme (TSSP) of the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Presidential Special Initiatives and Private Sector Development, was to create awareness and build capacity on the usage and benefits of bar-codes in trade and industry.
In an address read on his behalf to open the workshop and launch usage of the bar-code in the metropolis, the Western Regional Minister, Mr A.E. Amoah, said the best known applications of bar-codes were at the purchase points in shops and supermarkets where a scanner at the cash register read the product code and sent information back to a central computer for interpretation.
He added that the use of bar-codes as a packaging tool was standard in developing countries, and was growing in importance in developing economies and that Ghanaians must not be left out in the race.
"Furthermore, increasing competition among developing countries for export markets means that buyers are able to insist on the application of quality standards as a condition for entry into the market," Mr Amoah said.
That trend, he explained, had the potential to marginalise many developing countries and to avert that, developing economies, including Ghana, must be able to integrate into the global economy by producing and selling goods in accordance with global standards.
Unfortunately, Mr Amoah said, Ghanaians neglected to apply bar-code technologies in international trade.
The Regional Trade and Industry Officer, Mr Charles Folikumah, said the ministry was concerned with supporting the business community by helping them to overcome technical barriers to trade among which the use of bar-codes stood prominent.
He explained further that the use of bar-codes was a relatively new technology that many manufacturers and traders in the country were unaware of, in spite of its tremendous benefits as well as its importance in securing or maintaining an export market in particular and trade in general.
Mr Folikumah said the application of appropriate codes and labelling was an essential aspect of producing finished goods fit for sale and targeted at a particular market.
The Chairman of One Global Standard (GS1 Ghana), facilitators of the use of bar-codes in the country, Mr Kofi Essuman, said about 120 countries in the world had bar-codes, with Ghana being the first West African country to join in the usage of bar-codes in 2006.