DAILY GRAPHIC, Tuesday, April 24, 2012, Pg.

Story: Mary Ankrah
THE Vice President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, has called on the private sector to partner with the government to facilitate sustainable long-term development of the agricultural sector.

This, he said, would enable the government to develop policies and platforms that would treat the private sector as a true partner and  be able to develop new opportunities for investment, create growth in the private sector while at the same time relieving some of the financial burdens on the government.

He made the call at a forum held by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and Private Enterprise Foundation (PEP) in Accra last Tuesday.

The forum sought to bring together stakeholders, private agricultural companies and industries to highlight opportunities that exist in the sector to make it attractive for private investment

It was expected to produce a great opportunity to capitalise on and strengthen the ‘Grow Africa’ process and further harness the momentum of the G8 summit to solidify private sector investment in agriculture.       
Mr Mahama, in a speech read on his behalf, indicated that the government was investing in the enabling factors in the sector that would encourage robust investment from the private sector partners.

To that end, through the Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy and Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plane, the government would address issues including food security and emergency preparedness, growth in incomes, access to markets, sustainable management of land and environment, applied science and technology and enhance institutional co-ordination.

The vice president emphasised that those initiatives would “enhance productivity, add value chains and provide smallholders farmers with the tools and skills necessary to integrate themselves in supply chains,” adding that the government’s agribusiness strategy was to be embedded in the sector policy and investment plan, and was therefore, important in the successful transformation of agriculture.

In that connection, Mr Mahama said, the government in collaboration with the World Bank and USAID had prepared the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP) to realise that policy plan.

In addition to the new opportunities that would arise through the implementation of programmes, he observed that the government was undertaking a series of projects including export market and quality assurance, northern rural growth and root and tuber improvement and marketing projects.

Mr Mahama also said the latest World Bank Doing Business 2012 Survey, released in October 2011, revealed that Ghana had a relatively healthy economy for investment, though there were still some areas for improvement.

He pointed that some of the challenges to investment in the agricultural sector included the deficit in infrastructure and the need to accelerate the rate of infrastructure development particularly with regard to electricity and the density and quality of road network in the country.

“There is also the need to increase the private sector’s access to credit at a comprehensive cost and to regulate secured and legal access to land,” he added.

On infrastructure development, he said the government with MIDA’s support, had constructed a $2.5 million perishable cargo centre at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in Accra to boost non-traditional exports by 400 per cent by 2015.

Again, the construction of the N1 highway that runs from the south west to east of the country would increase access to the KIA, the port of Tema as well as between Tema and Accra, he said.

In order to provide better access to medium and long term funding for agricultural development, Mr Mahama observed that the government had set up the Outgrower and Value Chain Fund (OVCF), a joint grant and loan programme to the already existing Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) to support local outgrowers to provide more financial resources.

On access to land, he said the government through the GCAP was working across agencies, including the Land Commission, to address land issues which the Land Administration Project II (LAP-2) was expected to achieve.