The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has defended its budget of 20 million dollars that it will be spending on the agricultural Census.
The census is being undertaken by the GSS and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture with technical support from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The census is intended to help collect information on agricultural activities and products to see how they are distributed across the country.
The Ghana Statistical Service says the census will span over a period of 5 years and will be in four intense phases.
The first phase will cover data collection, processing, analysis and dissemination while the second phase would be core and Community level data production activities.
However the estimated cost of the census which is 20million dollars is already raising eyebrows with a number of stakeholders indicating it is too expensive.
Government statistician Dr Philomena Nyarko tells Citi Business News that it is the least amount that can be spent
‘It is not on the high side. The budget was prepared in collaboration with the ministry of agriculture and the food and agricultural organization which provided us with some consultants. So it has been thought through and discussed at various levels, and so it is the minimum budget that we can use for this work’.
She adds that for a project of that magnitude the amount involved is not out of place.
‘It is a census and we are going to cover all agricultural holdings within the country and you also know agriculture covers so many areas. If we are going to go into the details of all the various activities of all these areas then it will require a lot of resources to do that’. She said
Citi Business News has learnt majority of the funding will be from government while some development partners will also contribute to ensure the work is completed.
Already FAO has given close to $400,000 for the project.
By: Anim Kwaku Boadu/citifmonline.com/Ghana
