Ghana’s manufacturers are monitoring the escalating war between the United States and Iran with growing concern, as Friday’s strikes on Iran’s main oil export island and mounting shipping surcharges bring the conflict’s economic consequences closer to local factory floors.
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) warned this week that while production cycles of three to six months give most manufacturers a temporary buffer, that window will close if the conflict persists. “When it drags, that is where it comes, because no matter the amount of stock you have, it will get finished at some point, then you need to import. When you import, the question will be, will the imports be the same cost as they were before?” AGI President Seth Twum-Akwaboah said on Joy News.
The concern has sharpened since those remarks. US forces struck Kharg Island, through which roughly 85 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports flow, early on Saturday in what US Central Command (CENTCOM) described as strikes on military targets. Global oil prices have surged more than 40 percent since the war began, and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical oil chokepoint, has been severely disrupted for nearly three weeks.
The Ghana Shippers Authority (GSA) has separately warned local importers and exporters of higher freight charges resulting from the global shipping disruptions triggered by the conflict. Shipping lines have introduced emergency war risk surcharges, with fees reported at between $1,500 and $2,000 per container, while longer routing to avoid conflict zones is adding to transit times and landed costs across supply chains.
For Ghanaian manufacturers, the problem is structural. Twum-Akwaboah noted that a large share of local manufacturing inputs, particularly for light manufacturing, comes from Southeast Asia, a region whose supply chains are already under strain from the conflict. Agribusiness-related inputs sourced domestically offer some insulation, but machinery, components and raw materials for other sectors remain exposed to both higher commodity prices and elevated freight costs.
The AGI president said manufacturers are not yet panicking, noting that companies are “reasonably stable in their minds” for now. But he was clear that a prolonged conflict would push production costs higher across the board as new import orders are placed at prices that reflect the current disruption.
The timing is particularly sensitive. Ghana’s inflation fell to a 27-year low of 3.3 percent in February, a hard-won gain that policymakers have described as fragile. Any broad-based rise in manufacturing input costs risks feeding into consumer prices for goods ranging from packaged foods to construction materials, testing the country’s recent price stability at a moment when fuel costs are already rising sharply.
