The John Agyekum Kufour (JAK) Foundation and its partners, the Rice Millers Association and the Ghana Rice Inter-professional Body, have outlined measures to monitor state institutions’ purchase of Ghana rice.
Their commitment comes on the back of President Akufo-Addo’s directive to state institutions to purchase Ghana rice from January 2020.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra, Chief Executive of the JAK Foundation, Professor Baffour Agyeman Duah, assured that his outfit and the partners will monitor the implementation of this directive.
“The Foundation and its partners shall, as a matter of urgency, work out strategies for improving service delivery by developing a monitoring mechanism to ensure that public institutions adhere to the directive of the President.”
Mr. Duah added that the Foundation will in collaboration with other partners; evolve effective and institutionalized monitoring and evaluation frameworks/strategies for monitoring and/or evaluating the compliance with the President’s directive.
The John A. Kufuor Foundation in partnership with value chain institutions such as the Ghana Rice Inter-professional Body (GRIB), the Millers Association of Ghana and Hopeline Institute, have been working tirelessly in different capacities to promote the adoption and consumption of Ghana Rice to reduce the country’s dependence on imported rice.
There has been a pressing need for Ghanaians to switch to the consumption of locally produced rice due to the impact of imported rice on the financial resources of the country.
It is estimated that the country spends about a billion dollars on rice imports.
Ghana to ban rice imports soon
The Minister of Agric, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has stated that his outfit is working to ban rice importation by 2022.
It follows the success chalked as the country did not import maize between January and September this year due to increased maize production.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show earlier in December, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto said,
“We are determined that within the next four to five years, that should come to an end because we need that foreign exchange to develop our country by building the roads, hospitals, schools among others and not to use it to import things that our farmers are producing and giving jobs to foreign farmers.”
The Minister added: “The two crops we are focusing on are rice and soya; soya because of the poultry industry and rice because of import substitution.”