Ghana looks to reliable markets
4 November 1999
Ghana looks to reliable markets
GHANA is attempting to develop reliable markets in the region for its produce rather than suffer the vagaries of a daily spot market where prices can hit rock bottom.
This is reported in the Financial Times in a review of the countrys agriculture.
Besides cocoa, Ghana grows pineapples, cotton, cashew nuts, bananas and chillies.
Since the early nineties, the agricultural sector has been achieving consistent growth of around 4%.
But with interest rates very high, local farmers are starved of credit, rural banks are going bust and there is little investment capital available to go into value-added processing.
Bureaucratic and political difficulties surrounding land tenure also contribute to agricultures malaise.
Farmers are unable to borrow money from banks because under the countrys land tenure laws they are unable to secure the ownership of their property as collateral.
The report concludes that if Ghana wants to improve its economy then an “agrarian revolution” will have to take place.