Obama’s Long Arm of Consumer Protection Reaches out to Ghana

By Jean Lukaz MIH

A delegation from the Council for International Consumer Protection of the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) met with the Consumer lobby in Accra-Ghana under the auspices of the Ministry of Trade and Industry on Wednesday to deliberate on ways of leveraging the institutional strength of the FTC in establishing enforcement mechanisms to protect Ghanaian consumers.

This was part of the FTC’s second year of consumer education outreach to the African continent in their commitment to working towards consumer protection in a global competitive marketplace that knows few boundaries.

In a workshop themed ‘Empowering Consumers through Education’, the FTC delegates Deon Woods Bell and Shaundra L. Watson delivered presentations with Ghanaian counterparts on key topics that included common consumer protection challenges in the legal frameworks of both Ghana and the US, financial practices, internet fraud, consumer education tools, and dispute resolution and redress mechanisms.

According to Ms Bell, the principal, but not the only, consumer protection agency at the federal level is the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC works alone, but in concert with other federal agencies, to administer a wide variety of consumer protection laws. The overall goal is to afford consumers a deception-free marketplace and provide the highest-quality products at competitive prices.

Representatives of consumer protection organizations such as the Consumer Partnership (The COP) was in attendance and offered useful suggestions on how to adopt and implement the lessons learned from the FTC cases and consolidate the Consumer Protection Bill in terms of content and the institutional setup of the proposed Consumer Protection Authority (CPA) that will function as a parallel of the FTC. Other consumer NGOs present were Consumers Association of Ghana, Consumer Protection Agency and Consumer Services Association.

Discussing the legal authority of the FTC, Ms Watson indicated that the organisation has enforcement and administrative abilities and has two main goals of protecting consumers by preventing fraud, deception, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and of maintaining competition by preventing anticompetitive business practices. She added that under the FTC Act, the FTC can make victimized consumers whole through restitution and punish wrongdoers through disgorgement of ill-gotten gains. The FTC seeks these remedies when it can objectively determine a clear violation of a law and reasonably calculate the damages payment. The FTC does not have the power to bring criminal charges. Any such federal cases in the consumer protection area would be brought in federal courts by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Office of International Affairs of the FTC works with competition and consumer protection agencies around the world to promote cooperation and convergence toward best practices and also actively assists developing countries in their transition to market-based economies and their development of competition and consumer protection agencies.

Updating the audience on the status of the Consumer Protection Policy and the long-awaited Consumer Protection Bill, Mr. Ben Peasah, a Director at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, intimated that the Policy is before Cabinet pending approval after which the next steps towards a consultative development of the Bill can commence.

Participants were drawn from various Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) such as Bank of Ghana, Ghana Police Service, Customs Excise and Preventive Services (CEPS), Ghana Law Reform Commission, Judicial Service, Ghana Standards Board (GSB) and Food and Drugs Board (FDB) among others.