Is the Mills administration lying to Ghanaians?

Accra 31 May 2011 - The global food crisis is escalating and is having a serious impact on Ghanaians according to reports from the FAO and various international organisations. While this is going on the Ghana Mills led government is generating propaganda that all is well in Ghana.

During the month of May various increased warnings about the global 2010 - 2011 food crisis were issued.

On the 9th of May 2011 Jomo Kwame Sundaram, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, reported as follows from Rome, ³Global food prices are at the highest level since the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) started monitoring them in 1990. The World Bank estimates that recent food-price increases have driven an additional 44 million people in developing countries into poverty.²

A day later, on 10 May, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said that the rising output of biofuels is also contributing to food shortages, consuming more than 100 million tonnes a year of cereals that would otherwise be used in food production. He also said the world is moving towards high prices because of lack of investment in agriculture over the past decade.

Lester Brown, an United States environmentalist, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute remarked ³What if the upheavals that greeted dictators Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya (a country that imports 90 percent of its grain) are not the end of the story, but the beginning of it?²

In May U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also warned that unless something is done to hold down rising global food prices, the consequences will be ³grave.² Clinton told those at a meeting of the United Nation¹s Food and Agriculture Organization that the combination of food shortages and rising prices could cause widespread unrest like that seen in 2007 and 2008.

Clinton also urged countries to share food production information, limit import taxes, and resist the temptation to impose export bans ³no matter how attractive they may appear to be.²

By the end of May Therese Kennely wrote an article titled ³Rising prices in Ghana² where she observed that ³when Ghanaians go to the market or grocery store to purchase food, they face prices that have increased by as much as 40%. Even the price of a sachet, a plastic bag full of water, has doubled from 5 to 10 Pesawas, approximately 3 cents to 6 cents.²

The fact that the global food crisis has indeed reached Ghana was conformed when the National Food Buffer and Stock Company announced that it has released stock piles of maize onto the market to help ease the unusual price increase.

However, just a few months ago the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) through the Minister, Mr . Kwesi Ahwoi, said that there is no food crisis and that prices have in fact stabilised - a ³fact² that now seems to be contradictory to the true situation that Ghanaians are facing.

MOFA have consistently said that the solution for Ghana is to develop local production in foodstuff such as rice that is currently mostly imported. Local production of rice only caters for 30 percent of local demand and to ensure food security the country has no other option than to import rice and other cereals.

Promises from MOFA in 2009 that Ghana will become self-sufficient in terms of rice production within two to three years now also appears to be political propaganda. Everybody inside and outside Ghana, including importers of cereals, agree that self-sufficiency is a laudable goal, but that it will take many years to achieve that.

While the local industry is being developed, 70 percent of Ghanaians are subjected to extremely high import duties on certain foodstuff that is just not available from local production. Despite many requests that the government must also look at shorter term crisis measures such as lowering import duties on these foods the government has consistently ignored and avoided the issue.

It will be remembered that the previous government scrapped a 20 percent import duty on importation of certain foodstuff such as rice to help Ghanaians during the 2007 - 2008 crisis.

In December 2009 the current government reintroduced these duties saying it was due to the fact that the crisis was over. This step shocked the industry and consumers in the light of a World Bank warning the November of the same year that a new crisis is emerging.

The re-introduction of the high import duties had many negative ripple effects. In the first place it created a huge tariff differential between Ghana (37 percent) and the Ivory Coast (12.5 percent) that led to massive smuggling of rice on the Western borders of Ghana.

The smuggling was revealed by Anas Aremeway Anas in 2009 and despite promises of investigations it took the government more that 18 months to do anything about the smuggling. This sparked rumours that people high up in the corridors of power were involved and that the smugglers were in fact filling the coffers of the ruling NDC party.

Very recently an organisation called Youth With Conviction of Principle (YWCP) alleged ³this company (an importer of foods) and many others have been donating their Œtariffs and duties¹ to the campaign funds of G.A.M.E. (Gett Atta Mills Elected), an allegation that sparked new rumours of official involvement in smuggling operations.

A second effect of the increase in import duties and subsequent smuggling was a massive loss in revenue collection by the state.

In addition it adversely affected and indeed distorted the market with negative impacts on both local rice producers and legal importers of foodstuff. The high duties also resulted in in an immediate increase in food prices that has now been exaggerated by the latest 2010 - 2011 global food crisis.

Many other claims by the government relating to successes in the agriculture are being questioned. One such claim is massive employment of youth on the so called Block Farms - a claim that was debunked by journalist who visited these farms and found that all the people employed there are indeed existing farmers and not new entrants to the market.

The fact is that Ghanaians are suffering while the government is refusing to look at both short term (reduction of duties and taxes on imported food) and long term (promotion of the local industry) solutions. Instead the government persists in diversionary and indeed deceitful claims about the food security situation in Ghana.

Besides for a growing resentment by Ghanaians, it can be expected that government policy with regards to the global food crisis will be placed under the spotlight more-and-more as the 2012 elections are drawing closer-and-closer.

Food Security Ghana

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