WORKSHOP ON AGRICULTURAL FINANCE STRATEGIES HELD

A workshop to find viable approaches to rural agricultural financing has been held in Accra. Organized by the Ghana Microfinance Group, it was aimed at among other things to defining important gaps in agric financing and how to address them.

About 60 participants from the financial and agricultural sector attended the workshop. It was organized with sponsorship from the Ministry of Finance and Economic planning, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, IFAD, KfW, Millennium Development Authority, TIPCEE/USAID, ADB and ARB Apex Bank.

Opening the workshop, the Director of Microfinance Unit of the Ministry of Finance and Economic planning said during the Micro Finance Forum last year a Rural Agricultural/ Finance Working Group was established to look at ways of improving agriculture finance and to develop a strategic framework and action plan for the sector.

This workshop will therefore seek shareholder inputs into this action plan and set forth priorities activities and indicators in the key areas. This would be reviewed at a Validation Workshop before being presented to the Ministers of Finance and Economic Planning and Food and Agriculture.

The Managing Director of Agriculture Development Bank, CEO of Millennium Development Authority, representatives of IFAD and GTZ in their introductory remarks emphasized the need to increase agriculture financing to increase yield and to reduce poverty.

They noted need to find innovative ways to finance agriculture to reduce the risk involve, the need to improve the capacity of farmers to adopt commercial and business like attitude to farming and integrating rural farming to the global value chain.

In a presentation on the results of a study of agricultural value chain financing in Ghana, Dr G. Kwadzo the financing gap in agriculture required both equity and debt capital, short and long term financing and in particular products that are tailored to the cash flow characteristics of agricultural enterprises.

He suggested among other things the need for government to reduce the legal and regulatory bottlenecks to facilitate domestic market access to hybrid varieties of seeds.

There was also the need for exporters and grower associations to support contract farming as well as the need for both government and private enterprises to explore the potential for investing in the bulking, packing, cooling and transportation of agricultural produce.

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