Ghana's Exchange Commodity Market lauded

Hannah Tetteh - Minister of Trade

The Chief Operating Officer of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, Mr Ahadu Woushet, has lauded Ghana’s initiative to establish a Ghanaian Commodity Exchange, elaborating the numerous benefits that the exchange platform presents.

He said the commodity exchange platform would connect the various sellers and buyers in the value chain, thereby giving them access to the right market.

According to him, all the actors in the value chain, which include the producer, farmer, trader, processor and the international buyer, are given the opportunity to buy in a competitive market.

Speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic at the end of a two-week practical training session for key stakeholders at a Commodity Exchange Forum in Accra, Mr Woushet said establishing a Commodity Exchange in Ghana would yield better prices for farmers as they would be positioned strategically to benefit from price yields.

He said Ghana had better infrastructure and as such was in a better position to practise this form of exchange, noting that close to 80 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product was derived from agriculture.

The Chairman of the Technical Commodity for the Ghana Commodity Exchange, Mr Joe Tackie, in his address, said the ministry had undertaken initiatives to assess the effectiveness of establishing a commodity exchange platform in Ghana and was optimistic that it

would take off in due course.
He said the committee would undertake sensitisation and educational programmes to educate all stakeholders on commodity exchange and capitalise on the expertise of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.

The exchange, according to him, will help develop the overall effectives of agriculture in the country. He was hopeful that the needed legal and regulatory framework will be granted soon to enable them start the process and its operations.

Mr Tackie also tasked participants to focus on the knowledge they had acquired and utilise it to the fullest to ensure that it would benefit everyone.

He said implementing the knowledge acquired would help deliver jobs to people as well as improve the livelihood of farmers.

He also urged everyone to take advantage of the opportunities that establishing the Ghana Commodity Exchange would bring to Ghanaians.

The two-week forum brought together 28 key stakeholders of the Ghana Commodity Exchange Institute in Accra. It was organised by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in collaboration with the UNDP.

The purpose of establishing the Ghana Commodity Exchange is to create an orderly, transparent and efficient marketing system for Ghana’s key agricultural commodities to promote agricultural investment, enhance productivity, encourage market access and fair returns for smallholder farms as well as facilitate the formalisation of informal agricultural trading.