ZCZC
BCN-15
GHANA-FOOD-VALUE-EMPLOYMENT
Ghana to use food value chain to create jobs: official
ACCRA, July 28, 2018 (BSS/Xinhua) – The government of Ghana will continue
to create the enabling environment for the food production sector to generate
the needed jobs, Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture Kennedy Osei Nyarko
said Friday.
Speaking at the launching of the Ghana International Food and Beverage
Festival, the deputy minister was hopeful that this would bring a lot of
relief to Ghanaians.
“Farm produce will be readily processed into other forms of products by
off-takers thereby creating employment and improve livelihoods as well,” the
official noted.
Post-harvest losses due to unimproved value-chain have been the major
setback for farmers in Ghana, whose economy depends heavily on agriculture.
The official said the government would pay particular attention to crops
like copra, in which Ghana possessed the comparative advantage, to create
multi-million-dollar industries.
To that end, he said the government intended to take the lead in
cultivating 4 million hectors of selected tree crops including oil palm,
cashew, Shea and citrus over the next three years.
Food crop production has remained largely at the peasant level as financial
institutions find it difficult to finance the sector, citing the risks
involved.
“We need the right policies today in order to attract the investors into
the agriculture sector. Because of the risks involved you need certain
policies that can reduce the risks to the minimum,” said Thomas Wabi Bello,
an industrialist and a prime mover of the festival slated for December.
Sometimes, he explained, the government did not need to put its money into
agriculture per se to make it work, “but if you put the right policies in
place with the right incentives the banks will be willing to finance
agriculture.”
BSS/XINHUA/HR/1105