The current government’s “Ghana Beyond Aid” agenda towards economic growth has made agriculture development even more crucial. Government has in this light reiterated its commitment to revolutionize agriculture by way of policies directly linked to agro processing. Mr. Kareweh describes the agenda as only a clarion call for massive development of the agriculture sector through stronger synergies between the government and the private sector.
“The agenda is crucial for economic development even though many still don’t know its parameters. Agriculture is mainly a private sector business with farmers as the main drivers. So once we’ve initiated a programme like the One-District, One-Factory which is to be largely private-sector driven, the factories could be given some tax exemptions, concessions and facilities to efficiently produce and compete with the imports” “Government must also help in the search for foreign markets for the domestic producers – that’s why it has diplomatic missions in other countries.
So, that burden is taken off the domestic producers before it unduly increases their costs and ends up shooting the price of their products up and making them uncompetitive against imported products”. He also impressed on government, the need to institute countervailing measures to deal with trade policy implementation undermining domestic production.
“Our trade policies are supposed to enhance domestic and industrial production. It is only when you cannot produce a particular commodity sufficiently or at all that you import. But if imports become the main source of supply when you have the potential to produce then it becomes a challenge” “If you talk about rice, there’s so much cheap imports in this country.
So, even if you increase local rice production you won’t get the market. If you produce rice in Ghana, it’s supposed to be cheaper but it becomes otherwise because you still need to mill it, bag it, process it and advertise it and all that is additional cost.
If you are not efficient in all these, you will be crowded out in the market because the cheap import come well packaged and also well-advertised. It’s not about just producing something that is good but also marketing around the world,” he concluded.
Source: thevaultzmag.com
