Accra, May 20, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Friday announced that the government was working out modalities to establish a Poultry Support Programme to revamp the poultry industry in coming years. The move, he said, was geared towards creating job opportunities for Ghanaian youth and to sustain the poultry industry and make the domestic poultry attractive to consumers. Vice President Mahama announced this when members of the Ghana National Poultry Farmers and officials of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) called on him at the Castle, Osu.

The meeting was the third in the series that they had held with the Vice President to discuss and find solutions to their challenges of high cost of poultry feeds and vaccines, expensive day old chicks and competition from imported frozen chicken. He appealed to the group to embark on entrepreneurial training programmes to sufficiently and efficiently manage their farms for the benefit of consumers.

The Vice President called on the MoFA to release yellow corn from their buffer stocks for the poultry farmers to avoid the perennial importation of poultry feed which had over the years aggravated their financial situation. Mr Emmanuel Danso, Agriculture Project Manager of the Agricultural Development Bank, announced that his outfit had approved a budget of $15 Million dollars to import 32,000 tonnes of Soya beans for poultry farmers. He said loans had also been granted to Ghana Nuts, a Ghanaian Company, to sponsor farmers to cultivate yellow corn and soya beans for the poultry industry in the coming seasons.

Mr Kwadwo Asante, Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Poultry farmers, appealed to officials of the MoFA to remove the bottlenecks that impeded the smooth collaboration between their outfit and farmers. He said inadequate communication had over the years crippled the activities of the farmers and gave the assurance that farmers would continue to play their roles responsibly to ensure adequate poultry for both domestic and external consumption.

Mr Asante said the current price hikes in yellow corn and soya in the open market could lead to the collapse of most poultry farms if immediate steps were not taken adding 93We cannot continue to sell our fowls at the same price, if the cost of feed keeps rising everyday."