Agriculture helped knock down inflation figures –Dep. Agric Minister
Agriculture played a significant role in the lowering of Ghana’s single-digit inflation figures to a record four consecutive times fall since February 2011, Nii Amasa Namoale, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in charge of Fisheries, said on Tuesday.
He said in addition to government’s social democratic path of building a better Ghana through stabilising the currency, prudent spending in growth areas of the economy and creating a favourable macro-economic environment, agricultural activities contributed immensely in keeping the country’s inflation figures in a single digit range and further down.
Nii Namoale was launching the Third National Food and Agriculture Show (FAGRO 2011) in Accra.
FAGRO was initiated in 2009 by Great Argon Holdings, a private firm, with the aim of providing a platform for Agricultural stakeholders: small holder farmers and agribusinesses to showcase their ideas, products and services to their teeming publics, thereby reaching out to new business frontiers and increasing their knowledge in modern technologies.
The theme for this year’s show is, “Beginning with the End in Mind-The Value Chain Process.”
The Ghana Statistical Service in July announced that the country’s annual inflation rate fell to 8.59 per cent in June from 8.90 per cent in May.
It added that the June inflation figure marked the fourth consecutive fall in inflation since February, this year.
Nii Namoale, however, expressed worry that the agricultural sector was under-invested citing access to funds, inadequate security in land tenure, low irrigation, infrastructure, poor rural infrastructure in terms of roads, electricity and telecommunications and technical know-how.
He expressed hope that FAGRO would serve as a platform to attract both financial and technical investment in the sector.
Mr Adam Sulley, Chairman of 2011 FAGRO Planning Committee, said the theme was chosen to “reflect and address one of the key challenges facing our agricultural sector.”
He said there was urgent need to enhance investments, trade, marketing and food security adding that marketing linkages needed to be strengthened to increase efficiency, productivity and add value to products and services in the sector.
Source: GNA