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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Majority hits back at Minority over subsidy of fertilizer

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Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu

The NPP Majority in Parliament, led by its Spokesperson on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, Kwame Asafo Adjei, has denied any wrong doing by reintroducing what he called Fertilizer Subsidy Programme.

According to him, it is in the interest of the Ghanaian Cocoa Farmer that the NPP government led by Nana Akufo Addo chose to bring back the fertilizer subsidy policy, introduced by President John Agyekum Kufour, in 2004, to make the inputs available and readily accessible to all farmers.

Responding to the news conference held by the Minority earlier, on the same subject, the MP for Nsuta Kwamang Beposu and Chairman of The Parliamentary Select Committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs, Kwame Asafo Adjei discloses, “…from the beginning of the 2014/2015 crop season, the authoritarian Chief Executive Officer COCOBOD, Dr. Stephen Opuni decided to give out fertilizers free of charge to farmers for application on their farms”.

He alleged that, the distribution was based on cronyism and political affiliation and that, the Free Fertilizer Policy created enormous avenues for corruption leading to complaints of inadequate supply as well as diversion of the inputs.

He reiterated government position saying, “the subsidy provided is almost 50%, the granular fertilizer is selling at GHC 80 and the liquid fertilizer at GHC 20 instead of market price of GHC 150 and GHC 38 respectively. The Minority will be surprised to know that the very farmers they seem to be crying for have overwhelmingly embraced the programme “.

On Cocoa Stabilization Fund, the Party argued that, the Fund was not created to increase producer price. He said, it was meant to maintain the prevailing producer price in the event that net FOB price falls drastically, as is being experienced now, so that government does not reduce the producer price.

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