Ghana traders strike over falling currency

Small businesses kept their doors shut in marketplaces in Ghana's two largest cities on Tuesday as a major traders' union launched a four-day strike to protest against the rising cost of trade. President of the Ghana Union of Traders Association George Ofori said his union was campaigning against an increase in the country's sales tax, as well as corruption at ports and the decreasing value of the cedi currency.
Businesses were going to the wall, he said, adding: "So, for how long can we sit down for such things to go on?" Ofori said many of his union's two million members had kept their shops closed in the capital Accra and in the central city of Kumasi. A major producer of gold and cocoa with a nascent oil industry that began production in 2010, Ghana has recently struggled with a widening budget deficit that reached 10.8 percent of GDP last year.