An economist at the University of Ghana Business School, Professor Godfred Bokpin is wondering whether the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative of the government has yielded any results.
He doubted whether the programme has indeed, yielded the desired benefits since its inception.
Touching on the exogenous factors affecting the supply of food across the world, he said the development should test the viability of the Planting for Food & Jobs.
He stated that if the programme is doing well as the government wants everyone to believe, then there should not be food problems in Ghana following the crisis in Ukraine and other parts of Europe.
His comments come on the back of the European Commission extending until September 15 an arrangement whereby five of Ukraine’s EU neighbours can restrict imports of Ukrainian grain.
The EU on May 2 allowed the five countries – Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – to ban domestic sales of Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds while allowing transit through them for export elsewhere, including to other EU countries, Reuters reported.
The European Commission said in a statement that they would phase out by Sept. 15.
The Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, said bottlenecks and scarce storage capacity persisted and the mid-September phase-out would allow for improvements in getting grain out of Ukraine and through the transit countries.
Speaking on News 360 on TV3 Tuesday, July 18, Prof Bokpin said “if you look at what food inflation does in Africa, the impact is actually higher compared to emerging and developed countries because in Africa we spend almost 44 percent of householders on food.”
Asked whether Ghana has done enough to feed itself when there is a global issue, he answered “Not at all, the perfect feedback of government’s intervention of Planting for Food and Jobs is actually this global shock.
“If we had done it well, we would have seen the true effect of that policy intervention. The most important question we need to ask the government is that, where is the food and where are the jobs? This is the time to demonstrate the efficacy of that intervention. But as you can see, like many other flagship programmes, it actually benefitted the privileged few while the majority look on.”