“Ghana’s money should buy Ghana’s rice”: Finance minister wants public kitchens tied to local farms by law
Why should Ghanaian taxpayers pay for imported rice to feed Ghanaian children while the country’s own farmers sit on surplus harvests? That is the question Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson put on Friday, and his answer is a change to the law.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on November 13, he said the government will amend the Public Procurement Act so that institutions spending public money on food must buy it from Ghanaian farms. At a minimum, he said, rice served to schoolchildren and to the men and women in uniform has to be grown in the country. The aim is to give local growers a market they can count on.
The scale is what makes the idea matter. Dr Forson pointed to two large buyers, the School Feeding Programme and the Free Senior High School policy, and put their combined annual feeding bill at about GH¢6 billion. He described that as a big opening for farmers to supply rice, maize and other produce.
He also said the rule would have teeth. Under the amended law, institutions that ignore it could be sanctioned, so it would be a binding requirement and not a request.
The minister did not say, in the remarks reported here, when the amendment will go to Parliament, or whether it will name sugar, which has been part of the government’s wider local-sourcing push. Nor did he explain how farmers would be paid on time or meet quality standards.
Source: CNR
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