Government must step up efforts to curb fertilizer smuggling — Peasant farmers

The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana has said government is not doing enough to seal its porous borders which allow smuggling of subsidized fertiliser among others to thrive.

The farmer association’s statement comes after the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) revealed that more than 50,000 bags of subsidized fertilizer under the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative was smuggled to neighbouring countries.

In an interview with Citi Business News, Executive Director of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Victoria Adongo urged the government to provide stricter measures in tackling the smuggling problem.

“I think it’s very unfortunate because the government is putting in so much money into fertilizer to enable farmers to produce only for this fertilizer to be smuggled across the border. Government also set up a taskforce to curb this but I don’t know how efficient that taskforce was and I don’t think they are doing quite enough,” she said.

She further debunked rumors of farmers being engaged in smuggling acts.

“I can assure you that this smuggling is not done by the farmers,” she maintained.


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