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Farmers' co-operative groups to
benefit from MCA
Begoro, Dec. 16, Ghanadot/GNA - The Chief Executive Officer
of the Millennium Challenge Accounts, Mr Martin Benjamin,
has advised farmers to form co-operative groups to enable
them to benefit from loans under the Millennium Challenge
Accounts.
Briefing the Fanteakwa District Assembly at Begoro on
Friday, Mr Benjamin said each group should comprise about 50
farmers and could receive a minimum amount of ten million
cedis loan.
He added that all groups would undergo training in record
keeping before the loan would be granted.
Mr Benjamin said the MCA was to transform the agricultural
sector with emphasis on food crops and horticulture and
explained that cocoa farmers, fishermen and livestock's
farmers were exempted from the package.
He said the project was demand driven and meant to
complement the district budget in the medium term in the 23
beneficiary districts nationwide.
Mr Benjamin said zonal advisory committees would be formed
to monitor the implementation of the programme and explained
that the programme would operate in conjunction with the
Ministry of Food and Agriculture and that a 15 million
dollar support had been released to the sector to reach out
to farmers.
He noted that land acquisition and registration had been a
major problem confronting Ghanaian farmers, saying the
programme had set aside 12 million dollars to assist farmers
to register farmlands to avoid litigation.
Only private entrepreneurs would be mandated to buy the farm
produce and process them and that the co-operative groups
were not to process the produce themselves.
GNA
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