Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto
The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Owusu Afriyie Akoto, says the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) has completed and published the standards of Raw Cashew Nut (RCN) and kernels which will allow for effective pricing of both produce.
He stated that regulated pricing is only effective when the commodity is well defined in terms of standards such as moisture content, shape, size, and colour among others.
Answering questions on the floor of Parliament yesterday, the minister explained why the pricing model for RCN had been delayed, intimating that as at the time the Ghana Standards Authority, with the help of GIZ, was yet to complete the standardisation of RCN and cashew kernel.
He noted that while some farmers sell their produce after drying them properly, others sell very wet produce, adding that “pricing of such varied produce was going to be difficult and unfair to some producers.”
The country witnessed a number of demonstrations and agitations by farmers to press home for uniformed pricing for raw cashew nuts.
In November, 2020, the Cashew Producers Association of Ghana petitioned the Board of Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA) to fix producer price for cashew for the 2021 crop season which starts from January and ends in June.
This was after President Akufo-Addo inaugurated the Board of the TCDA on September 29, 2020.
According to Mr. Afriyie Akoto, the Board agreed and made the attempt by consulting various stakeholders and development partners in the cashew sector for appropriate information and data.
“They met twice on the matter in December, 2020 and January, 2021. However, the Board finally decided to defer the price fixing assignment to the 2022 crop season because of various reasons.
“Price fixing is a regulatory function and it is made to regulate the marketing activities of both producers and licensed Aggregators/Buyers/Exporters. That is, those to be regulated should be under the hold of the Regulator through registration and licensing.
“As we speak, registration and licensing of actors is yet to begin in this (3rd) quarter. A price in that situation could have been disregarded by the unknown actors and this would have had a negative effect on the mandate of the Authority,” the minister intimated.
He disclosed that as part of efforts to find average data on these cost factors, the Cashew Council of Ghana (CCG), a private umbrella body of all cashew value chain operators in the country, organised a two-day workshop funded by GIZ-Com Cashew to present recommendations on facts and figures on the pricing factors.
“The final report was to be presented to the TCDA for further deliberations. The timing of this level of discussion was delayed due to the late submission of the final report from the CCG who explained that their consultative process was interrupted by the strict adherence of COVID-19 protocols,” he stated.
He said the TCDA did not have adequate resources to conduct an independent broader consultation with the various producer and buyer organisations across the country to complement the recommendations of CCG.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House