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The Planting for Food and Jobs programme has failed, says the Chief Executive of Dalex Finance, Kenneth Thompson.
His assertion is based on the rising food inflation and Ghana’s ever increasing dependence on food imports.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile, he said that the state of the agricultural sector is nothing to write home about and should the government continue to invest in the sector without appropriately measuring and evaluating outcomes, interventions in that sector will continue to fail.
“I mean there are people in this country that are going hungry, food inflation is gone through the roof, instead of measuring outcomes, we talk about how many farmers have been helped, how many people have received implements, we don’t measure outcomes. We’re still importing tonnes and tonnes of broilers, and we’re importing tonnes and tonnes of eggs and rice.
“But if you look in the budget, they’ve also put in some scheme to do some poultry out-grower scheme…it’s going to fail like the ones that failed in 2014, 2016, 2017, it will fail. And it’s just job for the boys and opportunity for politicians to take money out and I feel cheated,” he said.
Narrowing down on the poultry industry, he said the failure of the government to ensure the efficiency of the people that support the sector is responsible for the sector’s collapse.
According to poultry farmers’ association, the sector now only accounts for less than 2% of Ghana’s poultry consumption.
“When you think about the poultry industry, it’s not about the birds, it’s about the efficiency of all the people that support that industry. It’s about the price of feed. What are we doing about maize? Let’s talk about those things.
“Where is the integration with Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Transport, where is the integration with FDA? Has the Ministry of Food and Agriculture talked to the Ministry of Trade? What have they done about it?
“And when you think about the tonnes and tonnes of money that we’ve borrowed for agriculture, it’s sad where we are,” he said.
