{"id":1236630,"date":"2022-10-27T19:02:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T19:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/27\/government-is-seeking-legislation-to-ensure-banks-support-agriculture-sector-minister\/"},"modified":"2022-10-27T19:02:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T19:02:39","slug":"government-is-seeking-legislation-to-ensure-banks-support-agriculture-sector-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/27\/government-is-seeking-legislation-to-ensure-banks-support-agriculture-sector-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Government is seeking legislation to ensure banks support agriculture sector &#8211; Minister\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Accra, Oct. 27, GNA \u2013 The Ministry of Food and Agriculture is seeking legislation that will make it compulsory for lenders to dedicate at least 20 percent of their loan portfolios to the agriculture sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The move is to overcome banks\u2019 reluctance to extend credit to the agriculture sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Afriyie Owusu Akoto, said the banks needed to help in the development of the agriculture sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The ministry, he disclosed, is currently awaiting approval from the Cabinet to design the policy that will make it compulsory for banks to set aside a certain percentage of their loan books to finance the agriculture sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the last decade, lending to agriculture by financial institutions averaged 3.5 per cent. A proposal for legislation requiring commercial banks to increase loanable funds to agriculture has been sent to Cabinet. When approved, we will go to parliament with a bill to make a law that can compel banks in the country to, at least, earmark 20 per cent of their loans into the agriculture sector,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Minister, who was speaking at a business forum organised by the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) in Accra, said the move had become a necessity as banks continued to shy away from financing agribusinesses with the excuse that the sector was too risky.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Commenting on the minister\u2019s announcement, AGI president Dr Humphrey Ayim-Darke said: \u201cIt is laudable, it is good, and we will support it fully to ensure that each commercial bank sets aside a certain percentage of their loan portfolio to support the agriculture sector\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The forum was on the theme: \u201cResuscitating Ghanaian Industries to Address the Current Economic Challenges, the Trend and the Way Forward. It aimed to discuss practical actions the government is taking to support industrial development in these difficult times.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>GNA\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related News<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"3bdebcfba4b410c2c8799879-text\/javascript\">(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=249643311490&version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Accra, Oct. 27, GNA \u2013 The Ministry of Food and Agriculture is seeking legislation that will make it compulsory for lenders to dedicate at least 20 percent of their loan portfolios to the agriculture sector.\u00a0 The move is to overcome banks\u2019 reluctance to extend credit to the agriculture sector.\u00a0 The Minister of Food and Agriculture, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1236633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[3025,1274,1144,1090,7007,1223,932,9505,115],"class_list":{"0":"post-1236630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-banks","10":"tag-ensure","11":"tag-government","12":"tag-legislation","13":"tag-minister","14":"tag-sector","15":"tag-seeking","16":"tag-support"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}