Businessman Senyo Hosi, has chastised the statistics department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) for churning out unreliable data.
This was after he revealed that he lost millions of Cedis for relying on the data from the Ministry when he decided to go into farming.
“When I used data from Ministry of Agriculture, I lost millions,” he said during the 3business agribusiness dialogue on Wednesday October 26.
To him, there there is no leadership at the Ministry.
He stressed “There is failure at the top, I don’t think we have an Agric minister in this country.”
Josephine Quagraine – Acting Director, Food and Agriculture Division who was at the dialogue assured to take this matter up with the statistical department and get the issue addressed.
For his part, Former Managing Director of Stanbic Bank, Alhassan Andani said Agriculture is a gifted industry to Ghana and to Africa as a whole.
Speaking at the 3Business Agribusiness Dialogue on Wednesday, October 26, he explained the fundamentals in the agric sector of the economy is that Ghanaians consume more than they produce locally.
This means a lot more foreign exchange earnings are required to bring in additional food supplies to feed the people.
When the exchange rate is affected, he said, it means the food supply is heavily affected thereby creating difficulties for Ghanaians.
“This event could not be happening at a better time and I hope our panellist will elevate the conversation to the level of state and to the level of global coordination.
“Agriculture is probably one gifted industry to Ghana, to Africa, not all of Africa, Ghana. When the fundamentals are weak the exchange rate will expose you.
“On this one in agriculture the fundamentals are that everything we consume in this country, we consume more of our agricultural product in this country than we produce. Therefore, for the surplus that you consume you have to bring from outside.
“What do you need? You need foreign exchange and when the foreign exchange is not there the fundamentals will expose you. So I think today’s Ghana and the world economy has exposed us in terms of the way we are organized in our agricultural sector.”\
