In the past two years, the Ghanaian economy has been devastated by the fluctuation of the world commodity prices, especially by the price of cocoa. Agriculture's contribution to GDP has been reduced from 47% in 1997 to 30% today. With the new plans outlined in the 2001 budget, what role do you foresee for agriculture?
You have to look at it first of all from our export drive, and then from our import of food items. These are two elements that can dislocate the balance of payment situations. We have no excuse to complain about the price of cocoa fluctuating because we should have known that adding more value to cocoa would have earned us much more money. So, one of our focuses is to add more value to our cocoa by processing it. There are also some other export crops like coffee, banana, pineapples, mangoes that people are moving into and that will obviously help earn us some foreign exchange. Sadly, in the area of imports, this country spends a lot of money that otherwise we could have grown in this country e.g. rice. We have exported rice from this country before, so we have no excuse today for using $100 million to buy rice a year into this country. As the new Minister, my focus is to reduce rice importation by increasing our own production and improving upon the quality. We are also importing a lot of maize, which is a staple for Ghanaians and also feeds the poultry industry. Our intention is to produce 10% extra of maize this year. We are also spending close to $ 95 million to import sugar, when we had 2 sugar factories before, Asutsuare and Komenda. They both collapsed for no apparent reason. We are trying to lay the foundation so as to reintroduce the sugar industry. It might take off by the close of this year and in the next year we should be producing at least some few percentage of our sugar for consumption by the end of 2002. Then, of course, we are importing a lot of frozen meat, chicken for instance. That also eats into our foreign exchange earnings. All these obviously decrease agriculture's contribution to the GDP. We are looking at our meat production here, particularly poultry. The difficulty has been poultry feed, so we are growing more maize to take care of that. We are importing close to 300 thousand metric tons of fish in this country. Our requirement is around 700 thousand metric tons but what we produce here is not enough. We are laying the foundation to reintroduce fish farms. We are going to do inland fish farms for the meantime. Basically, we are aiming at improving the performance of agriculture as far as its contribution to the GDP is concerned. In a way also trying to reduce our deficits as far as importation of food items are concerned.
Considering the sugar industry for instance, how do you intend to boost its production? Is it going to be a government or private sector initiative?
There will be absolutely no government interference. I have always said that it is not government business to do business. Most of our projects failed because they were state-owned. Now we are encouraging private entrepreneurs to go into all these areas. We are only here to facilitate the private sector.
What type of entrepreneurs are you looking at?
We are giving a boost to our own private sector, but we have not ruled out foreign investment. The investment code has set it out very clearly that if you are a foreign investor, you need to link up with the local investor.
Does this import substitution's policy have had any impact on the organizational structure of the Ministry?
No, it is this same structure that was in place to produce rice to be exported. We try to find out what went wrong and we have discovered that the credit issue needed to be addressed properly. The interest rates are very high and farmers cannot access credit at that rate. Everything else went high: cost of fertilizers, cost and services of tractor, agriculture chemicals. The way we want to address this situation is to cushion the farmers so that the banks in giving credit will not give direct cash but will pay for the services that go into agriculture. At the end of the harvest, then the banks will retrieve their money.
Could you elaborate on why you think it is more positive for the bank not to give away cash directly?
We have reached a stage where because money is hard to come by now, you put cash in the hands of a poor farmer in the village and instead of putting it into agriculture it goes into something else. We want to save them this embarrassment because at the end of the season they have nothing to show and for that matter they cannot pay back. It is an embarrassment to them as well as a loss to the bank. | Could you name some of the banks involved into that project?
At the moment, we have the Agricultural Development Bank, which is actually leading this process. Then, we have the SSB Bank that has also offered to move into the agricultural sector; they are ready to support the private individuals who want to go into processing.
Have you made any arrangements with the Ministry of Roads and Highways with regards to accessibility to the production sites?
This issue has been identified as one of the major constraints to agriculture in this country. We are working very closely together. We have identified the heavy food production areas that are locked up. It is therefore on our advice the Minister of Roads and Highways will redesign his feeder road network.
What is the relation between your Ministry and the agriculture companies like Cocobod?
The Ministry has very little to do with Cocobod. The Cocoa industry is not under the Ministry of agriculture. We only offer extension services to the cocoa industry. In the past Cocobod had been placed directly under the President.
What is the Ministry doing to encourage foreign investment into agriculture?
We are going to introduce the Agricultural Commission to work along the same line as the Mineral Commission; a one-stop shop for any big time investor into the agriculture sector. They will build all the information necessary for anyone who wants to get into the sector: the various textures of soil, the crops that will go there, the size of land that is available. They will move a step further to secure land ready for investment. We are planning to put this on the Internet.
A special relationship will be created between the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Trade and Industry in order to ensure that the chronic problem of finance in the agriculture industry is minimized. Is this initiative being promoted from the Ministry of Agriculture itself?
No, this is the policy of the party in power. Right from the onset in our Manifesto we had introduced the tripod type of management. It is our objective that by the end of the year 2010 Ghana becomes a leading agro-industrial country in Africa. The way we can move fast to achieve this is to have this tripod type of management. Finance is there to do everything to facilitate agriculture to grow. Then trade and industry is there to take everything agriculture is producing to process for domestic consumption and for export.
How would you rate Ghana's position as far as agro-industry is concerned?
Very low. In the area of cotton for instance, though we have a lot of textiles factories, our cotton production is just about 37, 000 metric tons. Togo is producing about 187,000 metric tons. Burkina Faso is producing 300,000 metric tons and Abidjan is producing 360,000 metric tons, yet we have more textile factories that Burkina Faso and Togo. This implies that our factories will have to do some importation of raw material, which could have been grown here. 90% of the inputs of the breweries is from outside; the labels, the corks, the bottles everything except the water.
What final message would you address to our readers?
Investment opportunities in Ghana are tremendous. The climate is good. The people are very hospitable, very hardworking and ingenious. My appeal to them is to look at Ghana now. This is the time to come and invest in Ghana. Our President has said in his sessional address that this is the golden age of investment so the private sector is the focus. Investors are very much welcome. From the 6th - 12th of December, 2001 we will be holding the first ever Agriculture Trade Fair in Ghana. This is basically to showcase in full the whole agricultural cycle; from the farmer to the transporter to the processor to the warehousing people to further processing to marketing. We want to showcase all this as a real business so that we can entice investors to move into the areas between the farmer and the consumer. |
V.I.P. INTERVIEWS 
