Donors provide $145m for crop production

Mr Alabi Bortey, Project Coordinator of Ghana Commercial Agricultural Project (GCAP), has said the government, in collaboration with other donor partners, has made available $145 million to enhance crop production.

The World Bank IDA credit is $100 million and USAID offers a grant of $45 million and is scheduled to be implemented over a five-year period.

Mr Bortey said  this during an agribusiness forum organized by GCAP in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in Tamale.

The forum was on the theme: “Exploiting the opportunities for Agribusiness development in the SADA zone”.

It was to create awareness of the government and MOFA policies, strategies of the targeted areas and to promote crops such as rice, maize and soya.

Mr Botey stated that the project had assisted the farmers to secure adequate land to grow crops and also created the enabling environment for a vibrant market to sell their produce.

He said the objectives of the project were to ensure increased access to secured land, private sector finance, input and output markets by small-holder farms from public private partnerships in commercial agriculture in the Accra Plains and the SADA zones.

He said in the Accra Plains, the project was focusing on the entire commodity value chains of maize, rice and fruits and vegetables and in the SADA zone attention would also be paid to the maize, rice and soya value chains.

Alhaji Limina Mohammed-Muniru, the Northern Regional Minister in a speech read on his behalf, said the government had implemented projects and programmes to improve agribusiness.

He said the government had supported 31 agribusinesses in the country and out of which 22 were from the northern sector.

Source: GNA