Border Closure: Manufacturer of Alomo Bitters Loses Millions

• Border Closure: Manufacturer of Alomo Bitters Loses Millions

The Ghanaian-based manufacturer of popular Alomo Bitters, Kasapreko Company Limited,  has lost $2 million or N612 million in revenue to the ongoing border closure.

The company’s Head of International Business Development, Mr Francis Adzah, disclosed this during an interview with JoyBusiness, a Ghanaian business news platform.

Kasapreko Company Limited, Ghana’s biggest local beverage manufacturer, said it has now been forced to look into other African markets like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin and few other European markets to offset the losses incurred so far.

Adzah said: “We managed to send in three trucks of products to the Nigerian market moments before the border was closed.”

He, however, said four trucks loaded with Alomo Bitters, one at the border while the others at the company’s premises in Ghana, have been left grounded due to President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to force standard practices and orderliness across Nigerian land borders.

“In September, we lost $1 million to the closure. October is almost ended and our checks show a loss of another million dollars. The situation is getting out of hand and very serious,” he said.

Nigeria remains Kasapreko’s largest market and sold 580,000 cartons or 13.9 million bottles of the product in Nigeria in 2018 alone.

President Muhammadu Buhari shuts Nigerian land borders in August amid the uncontrollable smuggling of large quantities of foreign products into the Nigerian market.

Local manufacturers have complained that the influx of foreign products was hurting domestic production and automatically local job creation.

Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, had said, in the past, that no country can survive with the Benin Republic as a neighbour, saying the number of goods been moved through the border was enough to kill any economy.

Since the border was shut, the Nigerian daily fuel/petrol consumption has dropped from 60 million litres per day to 52 million litres. The drastic drop in consumption rate indicates the amount being moved across the border to neighbouring countries, that are now complaining of fuel scarcity and high cost of purchasing the product, on a daily basis.

Annually, Nigeria spent billions on fuel subsidy as seen in the newly proposed 2020 budget where N450 billion was allocated for fuel subsidy alone. Yet about 15.4 per cent or N69.2 billion of that amount would be spent on petrol smuggled through the land borders.

While negotiations are ongoing, President Muhammadu Buhari continues to demand adherence to the same agreement signed under the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).