Pong-Tamale, (NR), April 26, GNA-- Vice President John Dramani Mahama has assured the business community that the government would continue to offer the necessary support to sustain their investments. He said the private sector was contributing immensely to the development of the economy and that assistance in a form of loans to develop their businesses would be given to them. Vice President Mahama gave the assurance in Pong-Tamale, a farming community in the Savelugu/Nanton district at the weekend when he visited

the Dulan Ayana Organic Mango plantation to see how best the government would give him the necessary support to expand his project. The 120 acre mango plantation attracted the attention of the Vice President who said, "You whet my appetite in farming. People like you need to be assisted for your business to grow so that the idle youth would be employed." Alhaji Yakubu Ayana, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist lost a lot of his investments in the recent Tamale political clash but continue to explore in other areas that would develop the region. Vice President Mahama said, the NDC government would hold people accountable for their negative actions that turned to disturb the peace of the country or destroyed lives and property to ensure that Ghana became haven of businesses.

He said the Northern Rural Growth Programme that he launched last Friday was a manifestation of government and development partner commitment to fight poverty in the three northern regions, which residents had to give their blessing to it. The Vice President last Friday launched the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP) jointly financed by African Development Bank and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), and it is aimed at developing agriculture commodity value chains to increase production in rural areas of the three Northern Regions and contiguous savanna districts of the Brong Ahafo and Volta regions.

The programme is also expected to provide production and marketing infrastructure, improve access to rural financial services and would fully integrate key private sector operators in the value chain. Vice President Mahama said a lot of investments were now coming to the northern sector and called for peace and tolerance since business was not developing in an atmosphere of conflicts. He commended the manager of Dulan Ayana farms for the initiative and assured him of government's support to expand his project to assist in giving employment to the youth in the region. Alhaji Ayana expressed gratitude to the Vice President and gave the assurance that he would try as much as possible to expand the project to increase the current manpower strength of 79 to about 150 employees. He said he intended exporting the mangoes to Canada, Holland and other European countries and appealed for support to increase productivity.