The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has called on the Agriculture Development Bank to accelerate the disbursement of funds intended for agriculture purposes under the Ghana Cares programme.

According to its acting Chief Director, Robert Ankobiah, some GHC 20 million has been allocated to the livestock sector. Hence, accelerating the development process will bring hope to the sector.

Mr. Ankobiah made this revelation at the 3^rd livestock, poultry and fisheries and training tradeshow. He explained that, the Ghana CARES program is positioned to help revive such enterprises in the agric sector.

He further opined that the agricultural sector is one of the productive sectors in the country. As such, it has been selected to benefit from this facility.

“Ghana CARES program or what they call the Obaatampa programme, is designed to bring up stabilisation in the economy; and also revitalizes enterprises.

“For agriculture, we presented our programme, our priorities and I’m glad to [reveal] that, for the animal sector an amount of GHC 20 million has been allocated. There’s hope, we would only like to appeal to ADB fastrack their disbursement. I know that as a financial institution, the risk element is something you’re always looking at”.

General manager for Agribusiness at ADB, Kwame Asiedu Attrams, revealed that the bank has rolled out GHC500 million to revive the livestock sub sector. He further reassured the bank’s commitment to support the agriculture sector.

“There are different kinds of financing for different levels of production and companies. Therefore, it is very hard to know what you qualify for, because the dynamics for accessing each of these are different”.

Funding for the agricultural sector has been quite a hurdle for most farmers. That notwithstanding, MoFA in April revealed that, for the last two years some farmers received investment from government.

The investment, the ministry indicated, has been made via Ghana Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (GASIP).

The National Programme Coordinator, Klutse Kudomor, indicated that the programme has increased its implementation status from 12% in 2015 to 78% in 2019.

De-risking agric sector

In June 2020, the Managing Director of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) Dr. John Kofi Mensah, disclosed that, the bank has been able to invest more in the agricultural sector.

According to him, this was made possible by key institutions such as the Ghana Incentive Based Risk Sharing Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL). He indicated that since 2018 the bank has introduced an initiative to de-risk the risky aspects of agribusiness.

These, he said, have consistently choked the industry of needed funding as finance institutions deem it a very high-risk sector.

Additionally, he intimated that one of the purposes of GIRSAL is to serve as a guarantor for the agricultural sector. Also, by depending on the sector “they are able to guarantee up to 70% for the farmer”.

The ADB MD further revealed that, the move has helped due to “security in investing in the sector”.

He further averred that majority of banks have failed to offer portfolios for agriculture activities. This, he explained, was as a result of of their potential to record major losses post-harvest.

Dr Mensah explained that with such a guarantee, the bank has introduced complete value-chain funding for all categories in Agriculture.