Letshego Ghana, a subsidiary of Letshego Holdings Limited (“Letshego Group”) has partnered with the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) to facilitate and provide funding for farmers under the Warehouse Receipt Financing Scheme.
The strategic partnership is confirmed through a partnership agreement between Letshego Ghana and Ghana Commodity Exchange and it is intended to improve farming value chain.
Letshego Ghana’s Director, Geoffrey Kitakule, expressed his excitement over the partnership, noting that Letshego’s partnership with the Ghana Commodity Exchange will provide working capital for their farmers, brokers and aggregators in support of their operations.
Mr Geoffrey Kitakule emphasized that the partnership will enable farmers in the Accra region to deliver more produce to store in the warehouse operations, helping to reduce their financial burden and enabling them to focus on their core business and to grow and become more competitive in domestic and regional markets.
The financial support from Letshego Ghana will also help to increase liquidity in the farming value chains by improving the financial security of the farmers and stakeholders along the agricultural value chain making the sector more resilient to market shocks.
The Chief Executive Officer for the Ghana Commodity Exchange, Mrs. Tucci Goka Ivowi, on her part, expressed her commitment to smallholder farmers and pledged to help them in their farming businesses.
“The Ghana Commodity Exchange remains committed to improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers and easing the burden on farmers, especially during the planting season, until they receive their returns upon harvest.
“In meeting this objective, we will seek every opportunity to engage with the brokers, aggregators, smallholder farmers and other stakeholders in the agricultural value chain, to understand challenges and provide solutions for farming communities across the country.”
Mrs. Tucci Goka Ivowi
Ghana Commodity Exchange’s Key Goal
Meanwhile, Ghana Commodity Exchange’s key goal is to link Ghanaian smallholder farmers to diverse agricultural and financial markets to ensure Ghana’s farmers secure competitive prices for their commodities, assuring the market quantity and quality as well as timely settlement of their trade in ways that meet the nutritional needs of the Ghanaian people.
The Ghana Commodity Exchange’s Warehouse Receipt Financing Scheme is a financial instrument that receives, grades and stores farm produce and commodities for the local farmers in the Ghana Commodity Exchange’s ‘certified warehouse’.
The farmers are then issued with certificates, enabling them to use their stored farm produce as collateral for loans from Letshego Ghana worth up to 70% of the value of the commodities in the certified warehouse for a maximum period of 6 months.
This represents a great example of impact financing that aims to accelerate the sustainable transformation of the local economy to deliver beneficial outcomes and improve lives for local players, regardless of their scale or size.
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