Ghanaian businesses are still reeling under war-induced fuel price pressure, the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI) has warned in Accra, calling on government to remove additional petroleum levies before production costs erode hard-won inflation gains.
GNCCI Chief Executive Officer Mark Badu-Aboagye made the remarks on Tuesday at the launch of the 6th Chamber Business Awards, commending government for already stripping some taxes from the fuel price build-up to cushion the shock triggered by the Iran conflict. He argued, however, that the relief falls short. Fuel prices remain elevated, pushing up production and transportation costs across sectors, and a power outage two weeks ago forced many GNCCI member companies onto expensive backup generators, compounding the strain further.
Badu-Aboagye warned that if government does not act on the remaining levies, business profitability will shrink and Ghana’s recent macroeconomic recovery could unravel. Higher production costs feed directly into the prices of goods and services, he noted, creating fresh inflationary pressure at a time when the country has worked hard to bring headline inflation down. He also cautioned that the resulting cost structures risk making Ghanaian businesses uncompetitive against regional peers.
The awards, themed “Shaping a Resilient Future; The Role of Sustainability and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Business,” will this year operate under an overhauled selection process. Awards Planning Committee Chairman Prince Akwaku announced that companies can no longer nominate themselves or be nominated by others. A technical committee will instead mine secondary data to generate a shortlist, after which shortlisted companies receive questionnaires to validate the findings.
“That is the clear departure from what we were doing in the last year,” Akwaku said.
The new process is designed to eliminate bias, strengthen public trust, and ensure recognised companies genuinely reflect excellence in service delivery, innovation, regulatory compliance, and sustainability. Badu-Aboagye added that AI has been deliberately embedded into the awards criteria to push businesses toward faster technology adoption, describing it as an irreversible shift that Ghanaian enterprises can no longer afford to ignore.
