Dr John Kofi Mensah The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) has partnered the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and three other institutions to set in motion an ambitious programme meant to end the country’s dependence on imported poultry products and create jobs for the youth.
The initiative aims to invest a total of GH¢500 million of soft loans in businesses in the poultry value chain to help de-risk their operations, increase chicken production and cut out the imports.
The first tranche of the facility, amounting to GH¢23 million, has been approved by ADB’s board and was now ready to be disbursed to six businesses in the Bono Region.
The Managing Director of ADB, Dr John Kofi Mensah, at a media briefing in Accra yesterday, explained that the initiative was the bank’s support to the government’s Broiler Revitalisation Programme that was aimed at increasing domestic production of chicken.
The MD said the amount was to be invested between 2020 and 2022 in line with the bank’s strategic plan.
Collaboration
The other institutions helping to implement the programme are the Bank of Ghana (BoG), which is providing the needed regulatory oversight to the lending, the Ghana Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL) and the Out-grower and Value Chain Fund (OVCF), two specialised funds that work to reduce the risks of lending to agriculture sector operators by absorbing part of the risks.
While the MoFA is to provide technical support to the beneficiary businesses under the initiative, the three other institutions are to provide the funding, the needed oversight and consultancy to help make the project successful.
Advertisement Broiler Revitalisation Programme Dr Mensah described the programme as “a big revival of the poultry industry” that would help spur growth in related sectors, including maize and millet production, provide low cost but quality chicken to hotels and other hospital sector operators and create thousands of jobs.
He said the initiative would target businesses that engaged in the production of poultry feed, the rearing of the birds, the processing of the meat and the marketing of the chicken to ensure that the entire value was properly funded to help remove the bottlenecks.
First tranche The MD of ADB said with the approval of the first tranche of the facility, the beneficiary businesses would be given between GH¢1.5 million and GH¢9 million to either revamp their businesses or start new ones with the ultimate objective of increasing domestic production […]
