News:
August 6, 2021
Government has issued permit for 60,000 metric tons of yellow maize for the poultry industry.
The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Akoto Afriyie said under the Ghana CARE Obantampa program, poultry farmers would be given interest rates subsidies as support for their businesses.
Additionally, broiler farmers would have the following subsidies:
• 50 percent of cost of day-old-chicks
• 50percent of cost of vaccines
• 50percent of cost of feed for the first week of production.
The minister who was responding to a question filed by Mr. Godfred Seidu Jasaw, Member of Parliament for Wa East on measures being adopted to mitigate the financial shocks occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic on the poultry industry in Ghana, however, made it clear that there wouldn’t be any consideration to extend longer terms of payment for credit facilities.
According to the minister, the CARE programme has 100billion Ghana cedis for the entire economy, hence nothing can be done again since there other sectors of the agricultural economy begging for attention.
He acknowledged that maize is a major component of poultry feed, as such the shortage high cost of maize has resulted in high production cost in recent months.
He noted that the ministry has established that traders from neighbouring countries are the main cause of shortages in the country as they took advantage of the sub-regional free movements of goods particular maize.
“The traders in recent times flooded the country to buy maize to their respective countries due to the effects of COVID pandemic on agriculture generally in the ECOWAS sub-region, Ghana has become the food basket”
“Mr. Speaker, the ECOWAS protocol allows free movements of goods and services, and therefore, the current situation calls for strategies to mitigate the demands for Ghana’s maize by our neighbours.”
The situation, he noted, was compounded by the severe drought experienced at the south during the course of 2020 season which affected production despite the massive efforts made under the planting for food and jobs programme.
And suggested the importation of maize to augment local supply to address the situation in the short to medium term. And it is in view of this that some of the companies, and poultry associations were issued the permits to import yellow maize for their work.
Unfortunately, the imported maize is yet to arrive in the country contrarily to expectations. More so, it has also been observed that maize prizes in the international market were substantially higher than what is on the local market, he added.
Dominic Shirimori/Ghanamps.com