The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has identified 275 empty warehouses belonging to COCOBOD.
According to the sector minister, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the warehouses which are situated across the country have a collective capacity of 90,000 metric tons. This was uncovered when the ministry undertook a stock-taking assessment of all COCOBOD warehouses upon the assumption of oversight responsibility of the cocoa regulator.
Speaking to host of Morning Starr, Francis Abban on Wednesday, the minister said an amount of GHC 25m would be required to refurbish these warehouses. This he said would be added to the warehouses under the purview of the National Buffer Stock Company. “We are taking them over. It will cost us 25 million cedis to restore them to usage and that will add to national buffer stock. Their total stock was only 32,000. Now we are bringing in 90,000 so it will take it to over a 100,000. We think we need 200,000 so we are only halfway through,” he said.
Government intends creating a warehouse in each of the 216 districts of the country. This is to ensure the proper storage of an anticipated surplus in food produce as a result of the “Planting for Food and Jobs” policy. The unavailability of storage facilities has contributed to huge post-harvest losses recorded by farmers, a situation seen as being the bane of agriculture.
Dr. Afriyie Akoto said a portion of the proposed $1million to be given to each district, would go into the establishment of such warehouses.
“Those constituencies which do not have warehouses, it is in their budgets to build a 1,000 metric ton capacity warehouse. The over 100,000 mt, we’ve reduced them into districts. …we have to build the link in all the other districts so that we have enough capacity to store the surpluses”, he said based on expectations that excess produce would be realized at the end of this crop season.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Tawakalitu Braimah
