A Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, has urged the private sector to invest in the operations of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO), as it is presently not well equipped to store enough food to ensure food security in Ghana.
“The private sector must see to the issue of the storage of commodities to regulate or supply to the market as a strategic investment opportunity,” Dr. Alhassan said on the Citi Breakfast Show.
[contextly_sidebar id=”vuF3k4sQ1BeNdRQxnzKj08y8Gvm0qsB4″]NAFCO was set up to, among other things, mop up excess produce from Ghanaian farmers in order to reduce post-harvest losses.
But Dr. Alhassan believes the private sector must supplement the efforts of NAFCO in their attempts to address post-harvest losses after bumper harvests.
According to him, “the government cannot build all the warehouses that we use or all the cold storage facilities that we use. It has to be done by the private sector.”
“Why is that we have all these cold houses that store away imported chicken and fish for supply on the market and we cannot have the very private sector investing in cold storage facilities keep tomatoes and other perishables in the country,” Dr. Alhassan argued further.
The Deputy Minister’s comments followed a Citi News report revealing that prices of some farm produce have started falling in some markets in Accra.
The reasons for the drop have been attributed to abundance of produce coupled with the need of farmers and traders to sell off the produce quicker before they incur losses from produce going bad.
–
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana