Accra, Nov. 20, GNA- Mr. Clement Eledi, Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, on Tuesday said African countries have a great potential to manufacture fertiliser on their own and announced that a Fertiliser Fund has been established to help African countries towards that end.

He said the fund was established last year following a conference in Abuja last year, with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, pledging to contribute it.

Mr Eledi made the announcement in a contribution to a statement in Parliament in Accra.

He said the Ministry of Food and Agriculture was paying a lot of attention to the usage of fertiliser, and had not left the pricing of fertiliser and other agro-inputs entirely into the hands of the private sector.

The statement, made by Mr Clement Kofi Humado (NDC-Anlo), was on the need to reduce poverty of food crop farmers in Ghana through a policy to equalise prices of fertilisers and agro-inputs. Mr Eledi noted that there had been rising prices of fertilisers in the West African sub-region, for the past three to four years, and the situation was not peculiar to Ghana.

He said the Ministry often sat down with private companies that dealt fertilisers at the beginning of every year, assess their cost and put in measures that they did not make excessive profit on fertilisers. Mr Humado had noted the price disparities of fertilisers and other agro-inputs at different geographical locations of the country and called on Ministry to work out a mechanism to ensure equal pricing to ensure to assist farmers for higher productivity and good income, especially in the rural areas.

"We need to take up new challenges such as the present one and come out with innovative policy initiatives and implement them with strong political will," he said.

Other contributions underscored the need for subsidies on farm inputs and called on the MOFA to bring back the Farm Service Centres, through which prices of farm inputs were analysed and subsidised.