Only $0.4bn credit for agric sector?
The Managing Director of Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mr. Alhassan Andani, yesterday, made a startling revelation about the poor financing of the agricultural sector of Ghana’s economy.
According to him, though the sector contributes about 33% of the country’s $16.5 billion Gross Domestic Product (GDP), credit to the sector amounts to only $0.43 billion.
Mr. Alhassan, who was speaking at a roundtable discussion with media personnel in Accra yesterday, called for a change, if the sector is to grow.
There is no doubt that the agricultural sector of our economy employs more Ghanaians than any other sector, but our farmers still remain poor.
This could be attributed to the lack of policy direction by previous governments that have ruled this country.
In this modern age, farmers are still using cutlasses and hoes to plough the land, when their counterparts in the developed world are using sophisticated machines.
After they have struggled under such strenuous conditions to produce their crops, they do not get reliable markets to sell them, and the perishable ones go bad.
The banks are business entities, and they would not put money into any sector where the beneficiaries would not be in a position to pay back. As a result, our farmers continue to get poorer.
The Chronicle thinks this issue about lack of ready markets could have been solved, if governments in Africa come together and promote trade among them.
We have the Africa Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Southern Africa Development Corporation (SADC), and other regional blocs in place, but they are only heard on paper, as they have failed to promote the welfare of the people they represent.
The Chronicle believes that if Ghana is in a position to produce maize, it should be possible for the government to buy the product from the farmers, and export them to Cameroun, for example, which does not have the capacity to produce the product, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, this is not what is happening on the continent, as AU member states prefer to import rice from Europe and Asia, which they could easily have obtained from fellow African states. This goes a long way to kill the agricultural sector in African countries.
The Chronicle believes that if Ghana is to make headway in the promotion of the agricultural sector, and attract the necessary funding, then the government must begin to champion intra trade on the continent, to boost the supply chain.
If this is achieved, poverty among farmers in Ghana, and the African continent as a whole, would be reduced, as the banks would be prepared to finance their businesses.
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