While the Ministry for Food and Agriculture has touted the success of its flagship programme, Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ), the Chamber of Fertiliser Ghana is calling for a fresh comprehensive audit of the activities of the project as it doubts the reports from the ministry.
According to the chamber, there’s little or nothing to match the success story MoFA has made Ghanaians believe.
Their call for a fresh audit came after a media report which indicated that newly appointed Minister for Food and Agriculture, Brian Acheampong has suspended the initiative to determine the impact of subsidies on fertiliser and seeds supplied to farmers who benefitted from the project.
In 2022, the government owed the Chamber ¢400 million for fertiliser supplied under the programme.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber, Prince Adipah stated that the figures published by the ministry in the past on the achievement of the programme did not correspond with the true situation on the ground.
“We haven’t really seen the impact of this programme when it comes to the figures that we get to hear,” he said.
In view of this, Mr Adipah proposed that there is a need to address the issues from the angles of accessibility and cost.
“Issues of accessibility would have helped more for planning sake if importers of fertiliser generally know the demand for the importers to bring in the volume needed”.
Mr Prince Adipah also raised concerns about the current discrepancies in data on the volume of fertiliser consumed since it was purchased under a subsidy programme, adding the presence of proper data could help the importers plan the financial inflow and outflow of the purchase to avert challenges from government buyers.
“We need to know the entire volume that we consume as a nation so that we know what it is”, he emphasised.
He called for more engagements between the importers and the government to restructure such activities between the private sector and the public sector.
Contrary to claims of fertilizer scarcity, he assured that there is enough fertilizer currently in the country to supply local farmers.
