Farmers' co-operative groups to benefit from MCA

Begoro, Dec. 16, GNA - The Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Accounts, Mr Martin Benjamin, has advised farmers to form co-operative groups to enable them to benefit from loans under the Millennium Challenge Accounts.

Briefing the Fanteakwa District Assembly at Begoro on Friday, Mr Benjamin said each group should comprise about 50 farmers and could receive a minimum amount of ten million cedis loan. He added that all groups would undergo training in record keeping before the loan would be granted.

Mr Benjamin said the MCA was to transform the agricultural sector with emphasis on food crops and horticulture and explained that cocoa farmers, fishermen and livestock's farmers were exempted from the package.

He said the project was demand driven and meant to complement the district budget in the medium term in the 23 beneficiary districts nationwide.

Mr Benjamin said zonal advisory committees would be formed to monitor the implementation of the programme and explained that the programme would operate in conjunction with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and that a 15 million dollar support had been released to the sector to reach out to farmers. He noted that land acquisition and registration had been a major problem confronting Ghanaian farmers, saying the programme had set aside 12 million dollars to assist farmers to register farmlands to avoid litigation. Only private entrepreneurs would be mandated to buy the farm produce and process them and that the co-operative groups were not to process the produce themselves.