Mr. Samuel Aggrey, General secretary for Food and Beverages Association of Ghana in an interview on Plan B FM ‘Ebaanosen’ with Bohyeba Afriyie indicated that the year 2021 was one that wasn’t all frosty for them. He went ahead to disclose some of the reason for that statement
He said that the introduction of new levies wasn’t a favorable one for them,
“We had several interactions with Government which I must say only yielded assurance but no action we also had interaction with Government about the complete banning of the importation of rice we suggested that the rather importers must only be given permit to import if they buy 20% of local of their total import value. This discussion was held in 2019 but due to COVID 19 it couldn’t take immediate effect”
“The Government did allow them to import rice because of the pandemic but news reaching us from the office of the Agric minister is that the policy will take effect this year, and he also said that the importation of rice will only be allowed on the bases of count down of import and investing in the local sector “
He concluded that, if the banning of importation of rice was implemented earlier, there would have been a huge gap because the local rice sector here in Ghana cannot serve all Ghanaians unless measures are effected.
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