Tucci Goka Ivowi
The Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) says it has created “the needed modern, interactive and appropriate technological marketplace” that is now connecting people with markets to trade in commodities.
At a news conference at the Ministry of Information yesterday, the Chief Executive Officer of the exchange, Tucci Goka Ivowi said the measures put in place have enabled farmers, cooperatives, buyers, brokers, merchants among others, to trade on a common platform anywhere in the country.
She said the exchange has a base of 220 members out of which 116 are brokers, 67 are associate members, and 37 trading members, adding that a further 320,000 smallholder farmers have been trained and are set to be brought unto the mainstream in the coming weeks.
Providing updates on the progress of the exchange since its inception in 2018, Mrs. Ivowi said they created a national and regional exchange to formalise Ghana and West Africa’s agricultural sector and provide better access to agricultural and financial markets for participants.
She said GCX has been able to create the needed connection between Ghanaian smallholder farmers to agricultural and financial markets across the sub-region, and as a result, there are new opportunities to increase Ghana’s competitiveness in global markets.
“We started by trading in Ghana for Ghanaian farmers but in the next phase, when you talk about the region, we have started with landlocked countries. We are already dealing in cross-border trading with countries like Burkina Faso and Niger. The idea is to bring them formally to the exchange so we are increasing our reach in the West African market, then the wider African market,” she said.
She added that “it must be said that it is a platform that is designed to allow us to train globally once we decide which future commodities that are destined for global markets, we will be able to link up with other commodity exchanges and trade globally, so we are talking about access to the market in Ghana, access to market within the sub-region and access to the market in Africa and globally. So it is a step-by-step process.”
By Melvin Tarlue