Ghana has in total imported GHC2,245,310,694 worth of Shea nuts, Cocoa beans and mangoes during the 2023 trading season Ghana Statistical Service has revealed.
An amount of GHC1,893,864,945 was spent on shea nuts from Burkina Faso, GHC185,205,246 Cote D’Ivoire, and GHC166,240,503 on mangoes also from Burkina Faso respectively captured in the 2023 GSS trade report.
Though Ghana during the same time exported products such as iron, ammonium, napkins, napkin liners for babies, flags, and paving, to these countries, many are questioning why Ghana blessed with huge hectares of arable lands should spend such a colossal amount of money in importing food based commodities from its neighboring West African countries which can arguably be produced in large qualities for export should appropriate policies be put in place.
On 19th April 2017, the Nana Addo Dankwah Akuffo Addo-led government launched its strategic flagship agriculture initiative dubbed Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) with five key pillars designed for policy action as; (a) Provision of subsidized seeds at 50 percent cost, (b) subsidized fertilizer at 50 percent cost, (c) e- agriculture (d) Market opportunities and (e) Free extension services in order to maximize production and create jobs for the teaming unemployed youth. Assessing the performance of the PFJ, the minority in Parliament in September 2023 accused the government of financial waste indicating despite the huge sums spent, the sector’s growth rate has painfully remained low at around 0.7 percent with the country battling rising food inflation not seen in decades.
“Having inherited an agricultural sector with a growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2016, and after expending millions of cedis on PFJ for six years, agriculture growth currently stands at a disastrous 0.7 percent,” the deputy Ranking Member, Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, Dr. Godfred Seidu Jasaw, said in a press statement.
According to the minority, government has so far spent about 2.9 billion cedis on the PFJ program.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/Calvin Powell
