Commodity Brokers Association signal local rice as bestseller on GCX in coming months

The Commodity Brokers Association of Ghana have signalled locally produced rice as one of the commodities to make significant gains on the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) in the coming months.

The Ghana Commodity Exchange in December 2020 listed local rice contracts to the commodities traded on its platform despite Ghana making imports of about 50 percent of rice consumed.

However, the Commodity Brokers Association have explained their projection is based on a strict grading system implemented by the GCX coupled with demand from local rice millers in Ghana.

Vice President of the Commodity Brokers Association of Ghana, Jeffery Ntorinkansah in an interaction with Citi Business News pointed, “the signs are promising and that’s because the farmers are bringing it [Local rice] in and a lot of the millers would prefer rice coming through our warehouses because of the grading. We have engaged some of them, and they are willing to off-take, some of them have signed off-take contracts with our members.”

“Bringing rice on board and hopefully expanding the product list on the exchange will give us more variety. So, rice has given us a lot more room to be able to aggregate. In terms of numbers, some of our brokers are doing a little over 200 metric tons within the last four weeks which traditionally they would have such numbers sometime in February or March but because rice is now on board, they can focus more efforts in terms of the aggregation of rice just as they’ll with maize, sesame, soya or sorghum,” he projected.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) has recognised local rice as a significant food crop that is given vital investment to improve the country's food self-sufficiency and food security.