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30.11.2009 Business & Finance

Aveyime rice project to save Ghana over $600m

By Business Day/Ghana
Aveyime rice project to save Ghana over 600m
30.11.2009 LISTEN


It has been estimated that the Aveyime rice project, at full capacity production, would be saving Ghana over $600 million estimated to be the current cost of rice importation into the country.

The Aveyime rice project located in the Volta Region has over 100 acres of rice fields already planted with jasmine rice, and even additional more than 200 acres fully ready for planting. The project which has successfully tested 16 rice varieties (10 foreign and six local) in order to identify the suitable varieties and the appropriate farming procedures, has been projected to produce 1,700 tons of milled rice monthly.

With an estimated full output capacity of about 800,000 tons of rice, Everett Anderson, Managing Director of Prairie Volta Limited, managers of the project was recent reported as saying that the Aveyime project could put Ghana in a position to meet the entire rice needs of the West African sub-region.

This comes as good news as, until now, the estimation has been that out of the 500,000 tons of rice consumed by Ghana, 350,000 tons are imported while only 30 percent is produced locally. The projection is that total demand for rice will reach 820,000 tons very soon.

"This means that if domestic production continues to grow at the current slow pace, the country will never become self-sufficient in rice production for a very long time," the Finance Minister, Kwabena Duffuor, expressed in the 2010 Budget Statement recently presented to the Parliament.

With the continuing pursuit of Government's policy to develop and modernize agriculture, it is expected that rice projects, like the Aveyime Rice Project and the general rice farming communities, would be facilitated to meet Ghana's rice demand. Government made this much very clear in the 2010 Budget statement beginning with the announcement of the restoration of the levies and duties the importation of rice and other grains and poultry products which were removed in May 2008 as a measure to cushion Ghanaians from the impact of the global food crisis. This takes effect from the beginning of the coming year.
In addition to the growth challenge posed by the indiscriminate importation of foreign agricultural produce into the local industry, government also took time to identify other challenges confronting the satisfactory development of agriculture in Ghana. These were found to be in the areas of the lack of standardisation and quality of rice seedlings; inadequate machinery and equipment; inadequate chemical and fertilizers; and high cost of production attributable, mainly, to high interest rates charged by commercial banks.

Consequently, the government has promised to apply appropriate interventions to address the identified bottlenecks and to continue to dialogue with the Rice Growers Association with the view to finding lasting solutions to all their grievances.






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