Parliament approves US$50 million GCAP loan

Parliament has approved the amended Financing Agreement between Ghana and the International Development Association (IDA) for an amount equivalent to US$50 million to finance the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP).

The facility provides Ghana with a special drawing rights to access the funds to improve agricultural productivity and production of both smallholder and nucleus farms in the country.

Dr Mark Assibey Yeboah, Chairman of the Finance Committee, in presenting the Committee’s report explained that, the original financing for the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP) was approved by Parliament on August 16, 2012 and subsequently became effective on April 8, 2013.

He said the objective of the project was to increase access to land, private sector finance, input and out markets by smallholder farmers from Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) in Commercial Agriculture in the Accra Plains and the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) zone.

He said the project was restructured in November 2015 due to some realities on the ground.

Dr Assibey Yeboah also stated that as part of the restructuring, the Project Development Objective (PDO) was revised to improve agricultural productivity and production of both smallholder and nucleus farms in selected project intervention areas with increased access to reliable water, land, finance and agriculture input and output markets.

He said the revised objective gave the project a national and sector-wide scope as against the initial restriction to only Accra Plains, SADA Zone and PPPs.

He said also included in the restructuring was the cancellation of the implementation of the Accra Plains Irrigation PPP component due to lack of interest from private investors.

He said the Committee finds the project to be immensely important towards improving agriculture production and productivity in the country and therefore recommended the House to approve the facility.