The World Bank has advised Ghana to develop its market and transportation channels to help grow the country’s agricultural sector.
This follows a study conducted by the World Bank on ‘Enabling the business of agriculture’, in which Ghana performed poorly in the said sectors.
Farmers have in the past also complained about the lack of a ready market to sell their goods as well as poor transport systems in sending their goods to the market place.
Speaking to Citi Business News, Programs Manager for the enabling the business of agriculture study, Farbod Youssefi said, more efforts must be put into developing the market places so the country could record significant growth in the agriculture sector.
“There are three main areas within the market; one is producer organization, which basically deals with how strong the framework is for farmers to aggregate their production to come together and act cooperatively to be able to access certain markets so that is why Ghana performed poorly in the markets”.
He added it in necessary for the country to develop measures that will protect the crops grown.
“Producer organization is one, the second area is plant protection and the plant protection framework. So all those rules and regulations really protect the industry and by protecting the industry, allow for greater opportunities in domestic and international trade.”
Mr Youseffi also stressed the need for Ghana to work towards facilitating trade with other countries to expand the sector, “The third area is actually agricultural trade per se and that where we look at some of the laws and regulations that facilitate cross border trade so export in particular of agricultural products.”
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By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessNews.com/Ghana