If you are building or involved in a building project, I am sure you have realized that the prices of one critical component in the building process, iron rods, have increased in recent times.
Iron rods are considered critical materials in building construction, due to the fact that shortfalls in quantity or quality of the product for some stakeholders could shorten the lifespan of buildings as well as trigger possible building collapses.
A visit to some iron rod retailer shops by Citi Business News revealed that the prices of the product have increased by over 20% in less than a month.
A high tensile iron rod that used to sell for GH¢5900 in early February is now selling for GH¢7600. This represents a 29 percentage increase.
Also, a mild steel iron rod that used to sell for GH¢4,600 in early February is now selling for GH¢5,700. This represents a 24 percentage increase.
Executive Secretary of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), Samuel Amegayibor confirmed the hike in the prices of the product to Citi Business News and explained what is accounting for the sharp increases.
“I think that the prices of building materials started escalating somewhere in December 2020. In December, we heard of iron rods going up around 42%. It was so sudden we didn’t have any warning. And when we asked the people, they were saying that because of COVID, most of the productions have closed or shut down or they have reduced their output. But it hasn’t stopped, between then and now we keep hearing of increment, sometimes within weeks, we get prices adjusted. I recently went to Antis, one of the companies that sell cement and iron rods, and the average increment over there was between 22 and 27 percent across Iron rods,” he lamented.
Individuals building their homes, who have to cough up extra money to complete their buildings around this time, are equally facing some difficulties.
Currently, Ghana spends over GH¢3 billion to import iron rods into the country, as part of efforts to reverse the trend, Samuel Amegayibor is advocating a deliberate push to check the ever-increasing importation of the product, among others.
“Government has a lot to play when it comes to some of these things. We don’t see much of government’s support for local industries to produce locally. If COVID-19 has not taught us anything at all, it has taught us that we should look inward for most of the things that we need, produce what we can and then use what we produce locally. But we don’t seem to do that. I don’t see that kind of synergy and support for beefing up the local industry. And in construction right now, we are doing about 70 percent importation of all the things we need for our housing and then only about 30 percent are produced locally. So, if we don’t do something to cause a paradigm shift from the percentage ratio we are going to suffer and continue to depend on foreign importation, then any time there are foreign shocks we will continue to bear it,” he added.
