The NDC is being asked to keep mute over the current prices of fertilizers in the country. This is because, when the party was in power, it did very little to address the concerns of Ghanaian farmers.
Peter Ayinbisa, the Upper East Regional Communications Director of the NPP said this when he recently spoke on the Day Break Upper East Show.
“They [the NDC] have the right to talk about the price of fertilizer? To say that fertilizer prices are high? They are talking about that? Who is describing the high cost of fertilizer to us today? The NDC? What solution did they proffer? What did they do to reduce the suffering of Ghanaians; particularly the farmers?”
“In 2017, we said because now, everyone depends largely on agriculture, and also to be able to industrialize this country, we need to move into agriculture. So we introduced PFJ and started subsidizing fertilizer. In 2016 I was farming and I know how much I bought a bag of fertilizer at that time. So when we came, we subsidized; highly subsidised. Over 120,000mt of fertilizers were distributed across the country. In 2018, 247,000mt across the country. We moved on up to 2021 where we had 421,000mt of fertilizers being distributed to farmers.”
This according to Mr. Ayinbisa has been the game changer for agriculture in the country.
Meanwhile, A1 Radio checks [August 23, 2022] indicate that a bag of 25kg of the government’s Planting Food and Job fertilizer is valued at Ghc160.00. This means a farmer is expected to raise Ghc320 to get a 50kg bag of fertilizer. The same could be said for brands of fertilizers not under the government’s Planting for Food and Jobs Programme (PFJ).
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
