Ghana CARES More
The Ghana CARES Obaatanpa programme is implemented by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) through various MDAs including Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). MOFA is operationalizing the agricultural component of the programme through the following structures:
- Minister.
- Supervisory Team: Overall decision-making body that provides strategic direction to drive the success of the CARES Programme.
- CARES Secretariat: The team is responsible for the day to day running of the programme, i.e. coordination, monitoring and reporting
- Initiative Leads: This comprise technical experts or initiative leads for poultry, rice, soya, tomato, and farmer registration. Each expert leads implementation of activities under the respective initiative or project.
AGRICULTURAL COMPONENT OF GHANA CARES OBAATANPA PROGRAMME
The CARES Programme identifies agriculture as one of the critical sectors to revitalize and transform the economy. Accelerating Agricultural Modernisation has therefore been prioritised under Ghana CARES. This aim is to ensure rapid competitive import substitution, support to commercial farming (particularly by the educated youth), increased food security, and the supply of raw materials (at scale, high quality and high reliability) for agro-processing industries for value-addition, job creation, exports, and industrialization.
The areas of focus are:
- Supporting commercial farming and attracting educated youth into agriculture through;
- Implementing a targeted programme to support commercial farming, including support to the educated youth to become commercial farmers.
- Rehabilitating and modernizing irrigation facilities to support commercial agriculture
- Reforming the fertilizer subsidy program to improve distribution
- Creating a Ghana Land Information Bank (GhLIB) to provide a reliable and easily accessible land based information platform to improve access to land.
- Developing and promoting agro-processing and food –import-substitution commodities such as rice, poultry, cassava, sugar and tomatoes;
- This is to be achieved through increased production and productivity of such commodities, value addition, promoting Public Private Partnership arrangements and facilitating access to land and affordable financing.
- Optimizing sector flagship programmes such as the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) and Rearing for Food and Jobs (RFJ), etc. for greater results, value-for-money and financial sustainability.
AGRICULTURAL INTERVENTIONS FOR JUNE TO DECEMBER, 2021
Four value chains (namely; tomato, rice, poultry and soya) have been selected for support under the Ghana CARES for the year 2021. In addition, farmer registration has also been selected as an initiative to complement the selected value chains. MoFA commits to work closely with the Private Sector to deliver on the following:
|
S/N |
INITIATIVE |
INTERVENTIONS & TARGET |
|
1. |
Farmer Registration |
- Register and create a database of 1.2 million farmers by the end of year 2021 to improve targeting, efficiency, and transparency in providing smart subsidy and other services in support of agricultural development. |
|
2. |
Rice |
- Support rice millers/processors with affordable funding for processing units and working capital to purchase quality paddy. This is expected to increase capacity of local rice millers and processors from 400,000MT to 500,000MT |
|
3. |
Soya |
- Support soyabean processors with affordable funding for refurbishing the processing units including upgrade of equipment as well as working capital to purchase quality soyabean |
|
4. |
Tomato |
-Support the production and distribution of market (fresh and processing) for preferred tomato varieties. This is expected to increase production by 10% by end of year 2021 - Seed development – multiplication of six (6) improved newly developed tomato varieties (breeder seeds) by WACCI and CSIR - Sensitization of farmers and stakeholders on improved varieties - Support the existing tomato processing factories and establish new processing units |
|
5. |
Poultry |
- Support 8 anchor farmers to produce 5,000,000 broiler birds equivalent to 10,000MT of meat |
A compact has been signed between Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Food and Agriculture to ensure the predictability of, and minimise the risk of abrupt reductions in flow of catalytic resources to the agreed interventions under the programme so as to facilitate optimal delivery of the agreed outputs and outcomes.