Akpeteshie (local gin) distillers have been called upon to take advantage of the Golden Age of Business and refine and package Akpeteshie to meet international standards for export to earn the country foreign exchange.

Mr Joseph O. Lartey, a retired senior officer of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), who made the call, said the refinement of akpeteshie was long overdue.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of the Progressive Distillers and Retailers Association in Kumasi on Tuesday, he regretted that the local gin, wh! ich was legalised immediately after independence, was still being distilled in its unrefined state.

This, Mr Lartey noted, accounted for the derogatory names associated with the drink and therefore, charged the distillers to work towards making the gin internationally acceptable.

He asked the association to organise training programmes for its members for them to be able to keep proper books to boost their business.

Giving the annual report, Mr Kofi Boakye, National President of the Association, said it made a modest profit of 13.402 million cedis after the payment of taxes and other expenditure.

He said from 2001 to 2003, the Association received cash of 78.308 million cedis and made a total expenditure of 64.779 million cedis and paid 19.3 million cedis as VAT and 12.04 million cedis as income tax.

Mr Boakye commended the Interna! l Revenue Service for giving the Association agency status to collect income tax from members on its behalf at a time when some unions and associations had been stripped of their agency status. Mr Owusu Asare, the National Vice-President of the Association, said the major concern of the association was the difficulty members were encountering in getting palm trees to tap the wine for the distillation of the gin.

He said it was in this vein that the Association had established an oil palm nursery to establish a farm for the members and that they were also in touch with the authorities responsible for the President's Special Initiative (PSI) on oil palm to assist members to establish their own farms.

Mr Asare therefore, asked members to look for land to establish their own farms in the face of the difficulties they were facing.