...Its a wake-up call for govt - AGI

Spread May 17/2008

Story: Charles Benoni Okine

THE Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has stated that the recent global food crisis and its impact on Ghana should be a wake-up call on the government to take the development of the agricultural sector more seriously.
It said Ghana has large acres of arable land which could be fast developed to make the country realise its dream of becoming self-sufficient in food production, adding “there is no longer time to waste or we suffer the consequences”.
In an interview, the Vice-President of the association, Nana Owusu Afari, told the Daily Graphic in Accra that food was one of the most basic necessities of life “and the government should not allow market forces to correct the situation because the trend does not point to a reduction in the nearest future”.
He admitted that the escalating crude oil prices on the international market could affect the cost of agricultural production but noted that Ghana would gain if it is able to develop the sector to be able to feed itself and also export some to take advantage of the soaring prices on the international market.
“By developing the sector, we could be also solving our huge unemployment problem in the country as well as reducing the rural-urban drift”, he added.
The Minister of Food and Agriculture had, a couple of months ago, allayed the fears of Ghanaians by saying that there was no cause for alarm as the country had enough stocks of food to take care of the people.
However, in spite of the assurance, the prices of food items such as rice and wheat continues to soar locally because most of them are imported.
Statistics from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) have shown that items such as maize, local and imported rice, millet, yam, cassava, plantain, palm oil, tomato, cowpea and groundnut recorded increases ranging between 7.95 per cent and 124.56 per cent within the period.
The figures were arrived at based on reports obtained from all the 10 regional capitals, as well as four other markets in Tema, Obuasi, Mankessim and Techiman by the Statistics, Research and Information Directorate (SRID) of MOFA, out of which tomato recorded the highest variation within the period, with the price of 52kg of the vegetable going up from GH¢24.95 in January to GH¢56.03 in April, representing an increase of 124.56 per cent.
Groundnut recorded the second highest with the price of 82kg of the crop increasing from GH¢65.88 to GH¢72.54, depicting an increase of 69 per cent.
Nana Afari, who is also the owner of one of the biggest poultry farms in the country, Afari Farms, said Ghana had no cause to complain about the rising food costs in the country.
Ghana is considered an agrarian country with more than 60 per cent of its workforce in the agricultural sector. Unfortunately, most of the people in the sector do subsistence farming, due to lack of farming inputs and land for cultivation.
In the interim, Nana Afari has added his voice to calls for a reduction in the tariffs on imported staples such as rice and wheat to meet the pockets of the ‘ordinary’ Ghanaian.
“This increasing cost of food, particularly the imported ones, should be seen as a crisis situation for which reason the government needs to act fast to cushion its citizens”, he said.
The Managing Director of Finatrade Group, a major rice merchant in the country, Mr Nabil Moukarzel, has made a similar call like other economic experts but there has not been any response from government sources.
The argument has been that once the neighbouring countries of Ghana had been able to do so, there was no excuse for the government to continue to delay in taking a similar decision.
The call comes ahead of the setting up of a five-member committee by President Kufuor to make recommendations to the government on how to mitigate the effects of the global food and oil crisis on consumers.
The committee, chaired by Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, Chief Advisor to the President, has one week to make its recommendations to the government so that it can act swiftly to reduce the hardship induced by the global economic downturn on Ghanaians.
Nana Afari said the world was in unusual times and the best way around the situation was government intervention which required no further delays.
He said the global trend with regard to crude oil prices was scary and with indications that the prices could hit the $200 mark per barrel by the end of the year, individuals could do nothing about the situation; only the government could.