Invest more oil revenues in Agriculture-ACEP

Koforidua, February 21, GNA - The Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP),    a policy think tank of the extractive sector,    has called for increase in the proportion of the oil revenue of the country invested in Agriculture.

The center argued that    increased investment in Agriculture was the fastest way to reduce poverty in the rural areas of the country.          

The call was made at a stakeholders' forum organized by ACEP in Koforidua for civil society organizations in the Education, Trade Union and Agriculture Sectors.

The aim of the meeting was to inform stakeholders on the spending strategies of revenue generated from oil in the country.

The center called for more investment to be directed at modernizing the production of cocoa, to enable the country to maintain its position as the leading producer of cocoa in the world.

The center also called for transparency in the allocation of resources for the citizenry, to know what project was receiving support from the oil revenue.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr. Benjamin Boakye, the Operation Director of (ACEP),     called for the introduction of monitoring mechanisms to ensure that Ghana got value for money, and called for determined efforts to use the oil resources to transform other economic sectors of the country.

Some of the participants called for a proportion of the oil revenue to be used to support research in the tertiary institutions of the country, and suggested the use of the Media and the District Assemblies, to monitor projects funded with oil revenue, to enable the citizenry get involved in the use of the oil revenue.

GNA