GHC500m fund for farmers coming – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has announced that the Bank of Ghana (BoG) will soon establish a GHS500 million fund to support farmers.

The fund is aimed at providing farmers with loans at reasonable rates to boost agricultural activities in Ghana.

“We're devising financial instruments that will enable farmers to have access to credit. The Bank of Ghana is establishing a fund, some GHS500 million, which is roughly over $100 million which is going to act as some form of insurance for the commercial banks to give out loans at reasonable rates to the farmers,” Mr Akufo-Addo said at the Heads of State and Governments high-level panel discussion at the 2018 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Kigali, Rwanda.

Mr Akufo-Addo also called for attitudinal change towards agriculture due to its enormous benefits and its significant contribution to the economy.

“That attitudinal change is something that we need to work systematically.

“People still continue to look upon agriculture as something that people who don’t have anything else to do, engage in; something to escape from and not something that will provide a good life which will make an important contribution to the development of society,” he noted.

Nana Akufo-Addo explained that his government is working to improve supply of agricultural inputs to boost production.

“We're now also focusing very seriously on establishing a very secure and reliable supply of fertiliser. So far in Ghana, we employ something like 12 kilos of fertiliser per hectare. That is way below even the average within the ECOWAS region of 20 kilos and the global average of a 150 kilos per hectare,” he said.