News:
November 20, 2025
The Chairman of the Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Dr. Godfred Jasaw Seidu has noted that the John Dramani Mahama Administration is making deliberate efforts in the agriculture sector to block loopholes to ensure economic growth in the sector.
According to him at the Cocoa sub-sector, a lot have been put in place to ensure growth of the sector which is going to translate into value that will lead to added jobs that many Ghanaians will benefit from.
Contributing to the motion on the budget, he noted that in the last budget, they had complained about debt of thirty-two point five million cedis and that debt has been reduced drastically in the cocoa sector.
He said while cocoa roads debt hoovers around 21 billion cedis, there was also the complaint of the owing three hundred and thirty- three thousand metric tonnes of cocoa which had to be rolled over. Luckily, he said, production increased from under five hundred thousand tonnes last year to six hundred thousand metric tonnes.
This is significant because it has allowed us to pay that debt but contributed two hundred and forty-three metric tonnes of cocoa. We have ninety thousand tonnes to go with the current projection and production level, stating that he is convinced that “we would be able to make up, pay our debt, and make additional income.”
“We have free cocoa spraying that will cost us two point four billion Ghana cedis, free fertilizer is back; adding that in the cocoa sector when these are in place, the cost of production for the farmer is going to be less, and more production will come to the economy”.
The budget, he noted stipulates that “we are going to have additional two hundred thousand hectors of cocoa under cultivation. This, he said, is a highly decisive step and policy”.
He called for support as it gives us security because it will help to project “because you are not going to depend on individual farmers; you can project what you are going to harvest and send to the international market.”
Another crop that is going to supplement Ghana’s Cocoa is oil palm plantation as we envisage, we are going to have hundred thousand hectors, and this is clearly investing in the productive sectors whose value chain is going to translate into jobs for a lot of people.
Government is deliberate about this; there is a budget of five hundred million dollars that is going to be rolled over the four years for us to be competitive like Malaysia in oil palm production.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com