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Ghanaian government spends 97 billion cedis on mass cocoa spraying
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The Ghanaian government has spent 97 billion cedis on a mass cocoa spraying exercise, Mr. Emmanuel Kwame Gyamfi, a Board Member of the Ghana Cocoa Board, has said. He said that previously, the government spent 315 billion cedis on a hi-tech cocoa fertiliser programme as loans to farmers in the 2003/2004 cocoa season out of which, only 27 billion cedis had been recovered.
Mr Gyamfi made the statement at the 6th annual farmers award ceremony of the Produce Buying Company (PBC) recently. Fifty-one cocoa farmers drawn from Sunyani, Berekum and Dormaa districts were awarded with Wellington boots, solar energy torchlights, machetes, cassette players and certificates of merit. |
Mr Gyamfi said that the government recognised the important role that farmers played in accelerating national development, and since cocoa was the bedrock of the country's economy there was the need to assist cocoa farmers to ensure that they produced abundant yields.
Mr Ben Tawiah Manor, Senior Manager at the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation section of PBC, said that adequate preparation in terms of both logistics and funding had been made for the cocoa season and encouraged farmers to report cases of non-payment for cocoa delivered to the district managers.
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