President pledges to build tomato processing plant at Afrancho

President John Dramani Mahama has pledged to build a tomato processing plant in Afrancho in the Offinso-North District to assist farmers to boost the production of  vegetables and returns. 

He said the goal was to end the recurring production losses because of the absence of storage facilities.   

The area is a major producer of  vegetable, accounting for more than 20 per cent of the national annual production.    

President Mahama, who was addressing the chiefs and people of the town as part of his four-day election campaign tour of the Ashanti Region, said irrigation facilities were also going to be provided.    

That, he indicated, would allow for all-year round production of tomato by the farmers.    

The election promise comes amid increasing importation of tomato and other vegetables from Burkina Faso and other neighbouring West African countries to make up for the production shortfall.     

President Mahama spoke of the strong progress the government was making to grow agriculture, citing, what he said was the massive investment in the cocoa sector.    

Over the last two years, Cocobod had freely distributed about 120 million high-yielding cocoa seedlings to farmers across the nation with the Region receiving in excess of 20 million of the seedlings.

He said, added to this were the supply of inputs including fertilizers, rehabilitation of roads leading to the cocoa growing communities and the upward adjustment of the crop producer price.    

He hinted that the Afrancho, Nkenkaasu and Akomadan town roads would be tackled under phase three of the cocoa roads rehabilitation programme to give these places the needed facelift.

Nana Yaw Amoah, the Chief of Afrancho, called for substantial investment in agriculture by the government, saying, doing that is critical to the transformation of the lives of many Ghanaians.    

He appealed for the construction of a well-equipped hospital in the area to enable the people to have access to quality healthcare.     

President Mahama also visited Akomadan and Abofour, where he told the people about the achievements of his government and why its mandate needed to be renewed on December 7.

Source: GNA