Ghana, Burkina open talks to formalise trade relations

Ghana and Burkina Faso have opened talks to formalise trade relations in food crops, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has announced.

To this end, Dr Akoto and his Burkinabe counterpart, the Minister for Agriculture and Hydro-agricultural Equipment, Mr Salifou Ouedraogo, met in Changsha, China, to identify ways to capture data as a basis to formalise their trading relationship.

The meeting took place during the China-Africa Trade Expo in China a fortnight ago.

While food crops such as maize, millet, rice, soya beans, yam and plantain are exported from Ghana to Burkina Faso, vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, lettuces, cabbage are also exported from Burkina to Ghana.

Ghana informally exports approximately 150,000 tonnes of food annually to its neighbouring countries of which Burkina Faso is the largest recipient of 75 per cent of the total export.

Exports

The value of exports from Ghana to Burkina Faso is over $100 million at the informal level.

“These exports do not go through the banks or tax system and hence are not formally captured in any way.

This trade needs to be formalised because of the value involved,” Dr Akoto said when he briefed the Daily Graphic after his return from China.

Impact of PFJ

He said there was food surplus in the country as a result of the government’s policy on subsidised inputs to smallholder farmers under the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative.

Dr Akoto said to date, less than 20 per cent of Ghana’s three million smallholder households had been reached under the PFJ and so food supply would increase.

He added that Mr Ouedraogo told him that he also had statistics for food exports to other neighbouring countries.

Dr Akoto said one of the main concerns of his Burkinabe counterpart was the absence of any means of processing tomatoes, shea and onion in his country.

He said currently, Burkina Faso exported 70 per cent of its vegetable to Ghana and the remaining 30 per cent to Togo.

Rice production

Dr Akoto said Ghana currently produced 450,000 tonnes of rice and imported 650,000 tonnes of processed rice, explaining that the plan was to produce one million MT by 2023.

He said the response from the farmers indicated that production could reach 650,000 tonnes and the one million tonnes mark in the next three years.

Challenges

Dr Akoto, however, acknowledged the lack of mechanical harvesters such as small hand-held machines, inadequate capacity of rice mills and the smuggling of rice across borders into the neighbouring countries as constraints.

Dr Akoto was convinced that the one million tonnes could be reached much earlier if farmers were provided with improved seeds and fertiliser and also if Ghana exploited the forest belt low-lying valley in addition to the traditional rice growing areas in the savannah.

Smuggling

“There is massive smuggling via San Pedro through Burkina Faso to Ghana.

The rice traders association has complained that the volume of smuggling can be as high as the total of San Pedro’s imports of 800,000 tonnes of rice,” he said.

Dr Akoto said he and Mr Ouedraogo, together with their Ivorian counterpart, had come to the conclusion that there was the need for drastic action to be taken to stop the smuggling.

He said it was a common understanding that “if the smuggling is not stopped ,it will derail both countries’ plans for self-sufficiency in rice production.”

Dr Akoto said his Burkinabe counterpart had expressed interest in learning Ghana’s module of the PFJ to enable his country to meet its one million tonnes target within the next two years.