Accra, May 22, GNA - A 250,000 US-dollars cold storage facility is being constructed near the Aviance Cargo Village Section at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra.

The facility, an initiative of the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL), is expected to be put to full use at the end of this year. Mrs Doreen Owusu-Fianko, Managing Director of the GACL, who told the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Saturday, said although the basic structure of the facility had been there for some time, it had not been put to use. She said the facility when completed would save farmers and exporters the trouble of having their export products rejected after they had reached Europe and other destinations. The products are often rejected because they fail to meet the required standards.

"We wandered why exports had to be rejected because they were not in good condition when the problem could easily be solved with such a facility," she said. The GACL Managing Director further noted that the country's food exports would definitely be accepted if they were in a good state. She said the facility would also prevent huge losses that farmers as well as export companies incurred whenever food exports were rejected at their destinations.

In addition she said even the entire country would in the long run earn a lot more revenue.

At an earlier meeting with members of the Export Associations in the Horticultural Sector (EAHS), Mrs Owusu-Fianko said the GACL would do its best to facilitate their work adding it was within its mandate to do that.. "We intend to help and to assist in making your work much easier, and that we would surely do," said Mrs Owusu-Fianko. Some members of the EAHS spoke against officials, who demanded bribes along the way before their exports could be processed.

The EAHS members also requested to be educated on the appropriate channels through which they could air their grievances and have them resolved effectively. With funds from the Millennium Challenge Account, another storage facility is expected to be built at the Airport. The rejection of food exports has caused exporters and farmers huge financial losses.

Recently, export companies and farmers incurred huge losses running into millions of Ghana cedis because flights were banned from flying either out of or into Europe. The reason was that foodstuffs processed for exports could not be flown out of the country. If there were adequate storage facilities at the Airport, most of the items would not have gone bad.