Ghana’s reliance on imports because of uncompetitive Agriculture sector – USAID Chief of Party

The Chief of Party, USAID-ADVANCE Programme, Emmanuel Dormon has urged government to make the agriculture sector more productive and efficient.

The Chief of Party explained that this has resulted in Ghana’s over dependence on importation and made the sector highly uncompetitive.

Speaking on the sidelines of a Technical summit on the theme 'scaling up impact and sustainability' in Accra, Mr. Dormon explained that because of the inefficiencies in the system, the cost of production is high making produce in Ghana more expensive compared to produce of other countries.

“If you produce inefficiently, it becomes cheaper to import the same commodity than to produce it locally, so if somebody spend $300 to produce ten tons and you spend $200 to produce two tons, you are lost in the market, so that person can sell his ten tons at a much cheaper unit price than you can”

“…that’s what is accounting for a lot of the importation on the market. We are importing because we are not competitive, we are not importing because we can’t produce, we can produce but simply because our productivity is too low.”

Ahead of the budget reading, Mr Dormon expressed his desire to see Government’s committed efforts to addressing the issues confronting the agricultural sector.

He added that the government should focus on policy initiatives on seeds, fertilizer, and agricultural inputs with clear roadmap and implementation strategy that will lead to an efficient sector.

He was optimistic that with the right policies by the government, the Agriculture sector could become very competitive and also reduce importation of goods that could be produced locally.

“We expect to see policies on seed, we expect to see policies on fertilizer, if there are going to be subsidies we expect to see clear implementation guidelines.”

The Agriculture Development and Value Chain Enhancement (ADVANCE) Programme was introduced under the Feed the Future initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help improve the agricultural sector in developing countries.

The programme has since organised training programmes for farmers and taught them modern practices in agricultural to improve their productivity.