Govt has no plan to buy cashew
The Minister for Trade and Industry, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, has stressed that the government has no plan to buy cashew, since it is purely private business.
He said the most important thing was for the farmers to get the right price for their produce.
Dr Spio-Garbrah made this known when he met cashew farmers at Wenchi as part of a three-day working visit to some districts in the Brong Ahafo Region participating in the Rural Enterprises Programme (REP).
He said a time would came when only Ghanaians would be allowed to buy cashew locally, and that no foreigner would be allowed to buy cashew in the country.
The minister said only traders and cashew processors would buy cashew, and added: “Let us protect the cashew industry in the country for the farmers to benefit from cashew production”.
Dr Spio-Garbrah explained that if cashew was exported, cashew processing factories in the country would collapse and that could worsen the unemployment problem, since the factories created more jobs.
He said cashew production in the country was between 60,000 and 65,000 metric tonnes per a year, while processing capacity was about 70,000 metric tonnes.
The President of the Cashew Farmers Association, Mr Kwaku Adu appealed for assistance for the farmers to increase production.
The minister had earlier visited some businesses that had been supported by the Rural Enterprises Programme and other small scale enterprises in the Tano North and South districts, Techiman, Wenchi and Berekum municipalities.
Some of the projects he inspected included poultry farms, oil palm and cassava processing, woodworks, aquaculture, mushroom and tomato processing.
Addressing the people at Bechem in the Tano South District, Dr Spio-Garbrah said the Rural Enterprises Programme (REP), which had been in existence for 20 years was an attempt to make people in the rural areas become entrepreneurs to improve income and create more jobs.
He said Ghanaians should be more business minded since the country had great potential for everyone and that the government had put in place many mechanisms of which the REP was one.
He noted that Brong Ahafo Region had fertile soil, climate and rainfall pattern good for the cultivation of wide range of crops.
He, therefore, appealed to the unemployed youth to get to the land, which he said was the future of the country.
