The Government is to make an application early next week for the formal take-over of the Quality Grain Company Limited at Aveyime.

The legal take over would regularise the government's position on the actual ownership of the company. Nana Akufo-Addo, the Attorney-General, announced this at a press conference in Accra yesterday. The company, which was established in 1995, reportedly failed to comply with the provisions of the Investment Code.

He said the President has subsequently directed the Minister of Agriculture to submit proposals for the development of the sector, once the government has taken over. Nana Akufo Addo said through the state's intervention, the company, which has been bedevilled by losses and other improprieties, will regain its value and serve its intended role. He said the loans and facilities granted to the company meant that it was in fact a contractor to the government, which guaranteed the loans it was granted for the execution of the project.

He said the company does not fall into the category of an investor either by itself or part of a joint venture either with a Ghanaian private entity or the government, a situation which infringes on the country's investment laws.

"The facts are that from July 1995 when the company was incorporated in the country through Novermber 1996 to August 1999, the company never registered with the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC)," he said. Nana Akufo Addo said the facts show that in August 12 1998, six days before a GTV news item gave the impresssion that the company had invested $27 million in a rice project in the country, the company attempted to to register as an investor at the GIPC.

This attempt, to register, he said, failed as the company could not satisfy the centre's requirement that an investor should show evidence of having brought foreign capital into the country in pursuance of the investment project. He said the attempt at registration was, therefore, to give support to the company's claim that it was an investor in the country who had been let down by unco-perative public officials, adding that "the company was never an investor."

Nana Akufo Addo said apart from the first external loan of November 1996 for $6,196,330, none of the other loans and guarantees extended to the company were approved by Parliament. "These loans, therefore, violate the Constituion which may carry legal consequence for the public officials who acted to effect them," he stressed.

The Minister of Agriculture, Major Courage Quashigah (rtd), who joined in the press conference later, said the consumption of rice has taken the front role as a staple food and called for the need to reduce its importation. Nana Akufo Addo was flanked at the conference by Ms Elizabeth Ohene, Minister in charge of media Relations and Mrs Glady Asmah, Minister for Women's Affairs.