Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Kennedy Nyarko Osei, made this disclosure in an interview with Kwame Tutu on “Anopa Nkomo” on Accra-based Kingdom FM 107.7 show and monitored in Lagos by ITREALMS.
“We import billion dollars of rice into the country, but the Agric Ministry, led by Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, is determined that by the end of 2022 we will stop importing rice from other countries based on our projections. The two crops we are focusing on are rice and soya; soya because of the poultry industry and rice because of import substitution,” he said.
ITREALMS recalled that Ghana recently put pressure on Nigeria to open its borders for goods from other countries. Noteworthy was that Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari recently ordered the closure of his country's borders to stem the importation of goods with local substitutes, especially rice.
Reports had it that the Republic of Benin, which does not consume parboiled rice, is the perhaps the largest importer of the rice type through its ports.
The border closure came after years of ban by the Central Bank of Nigeria of access to foreign exchange by importers of 43 prohibited products.
The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, retired Colonel Hameed Ali, said within one week of the closure of Nigeria’s borders, over 500,000 bags of locally manufactured rice that had been lying in warehouses of the producers were sold.
Rice, ITREALMS gathered, constitutes some 82 per cent of Ghana’s import, thus accounting for $1 billion, which is about 2 per cent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to Ghana’s Deputy Trades Minister, Robert Ahomka Lindsay.
Nenye Dom/Editor
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