SET UP AGRICULTURAL CREDIT FUND — NASHIRU (PAGE 35, SEPT 1, 2010)

THE President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), Mr Mohammed Nashiru has suggested the setting up of an Agricultural Credit Fund to address the challenges of agribusiness in the country, especially in northern Ghana.
He stated that when the fund was established, it would help address such problems as limited access to reliable and cheap credit facilities, high interest rates on credit facilities, cumbersome procedure on loan acquisition and little attention on financial institutions on credit provision to the agricultural sector, among other challenges.
Mr Nashiru made the suggestion in Tamale at a forum on promoting agribusiness development in Ghana.
The National Agribusiness Development Programme (NADEP) at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness of the University of Ghana, Legon, organised the event in collaboration with the Departments of Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics and Extension of the University for Development Studies (UDS).
Mr Nashiru stressed the need for the strengthening of the institutional framework for access to credit for agriculture.
He advocated that the government should avoid being signatories to treaties that adversely affected agriculture.
“Flexible procedure in loan acquisition is critical to agribusiness development; the need to reduce interest rates is equally important,” Mr Nashiru stated.
Touching on other challenges to agribusiness development, he stated that erratic weather patterns and inadequate resourced weather related institutions to predict weather patterns must be effectively addressed.
Mr Nashiru further explained that high illiteracy rate on the part of producers and international treaties that hindered agribusiness growth in Ghana were other challenges hindering the growth of the agribusiness sector.
The Head of the Department of Agribusiness Management and Finance of the UDS, Dr Richard Yeboah, mentioned loan recovery, political interference and the failure of loan applicants to give the right information about their business transactions, had discouraged many financial institutions from giving out loans.
He stated that as a way of addressing such challenges, the institutions had introduced a number of measures like credit with education, more field monitoring of credit facilities and the dependence on more organised groups introduced by non-governmental organisations.