Government spends about 7.3 per cent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to import food despite the vast arable land lying fallow, Dr. Richard Winfred Anane, MP for Bantama, said in Kumasi in central Ghana on Friday.

Giving statistics, Anane, opposition NPP (New Patriotic Party) Shadow Minister for Agriculture, said one trillion Cedis worth of food was imported in 1997; this increased to 1.3 trillion Cedis in 1998 and to about 1.54 trillion Cedis last year. ($1 = 6,300 cedis)

Anane was interacting with 16 journalists drawn from the Northern Sector of the country at a two-week course on "Election Reporting" organised by the Thomson Foundation and sponsored by the British Council. He said an NPP government would solve the problem of subsidy on agricultural inputs as well as credit facilities for farmers to enable them to produce enough food for consumption and more raw materials for agro-processing. It would also reduce food imports.

Anane noted that Ghana being an agricultural country, the new government to be formed by the NPP would pay more attention to production, marketing, transportation of farm produce, storage and processing to add value to them.

Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, MP for Old Tafo Suame, appealed to NPP polling agents to be more vigilant at the polling centres and the constituency collation centres on the polling day. He stressed the need for Constituency Executives to undertake an effective education programme on voting procedure and collation of results by officials of the Electoral Commission.

Mensah-Bonsu said all flaws in the electoral process that culminated in the writing of the stolen verdict after the 1992 elections should be pointed out to the agents to be well informed of their role in the elections.