Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Ghana’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, has attributed profiteering to the high price of several food goods, particularly in the country’s major cities.
He claimed that people would buy a basket of tomatoes for $150 in the countryside where they are produced before raising the price to about $400 in the city.
He made the comment during an appearance on TV3’s Ghana Tonight Show, hosted by Alfred Ocansey.
“The problem that we are facing about the high cost of food is nothing to do with the shortage of food in the markets. You go to the producing areas, you will see exactly what I am talking about, I am just coming back five weeks ago, and there are plenty of stocks and maize not even for this year, this year’s harvest is yet to come, and we are talking of leftover last year’s crops.
“The issue is, you go and buy a basket of let’s say ¢150 of tomatoes, and then it comes to Kumasi and suddenly becomes ¢400, so there is some profiteering going on.”
He added that the success of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PF&J) initiative has caused residents of several nearby West African (W/A) nations to flock to Ghana to buy food.
According to Dr Afrityie Akoto, Ghanaians and other inhabitants of Ghana do not experience hunger to the same extent that people in other nations do because of the abundance of food brought on by the PF&J.
“Without Planting for Food and Jobs we’ll be going as hungry as our neighbours around West Africa who are now coming to Ghana as the bread basket to pick our surpluses to the point that we even had to limit it by saying we are temporary banning export of our products to the neighbouring countries,” he said.
“Of course, other west African countries are going hungry that’s why they’re coming to Ghana to pick our food. Our surpluses and you’ll just have to travel to Ejura and other places to see those days the number plates of trucks crisscrossing Ghana, picking up surpluses to feed their own countries.
“As far as Kano in Nigeria, they were coming here to buy our rice,” he stressed.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Joseph Asare
