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Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture plans to halve its rice imports, which costs US $100 million a year, before the end of the year, the ‘Daily Graphic’ newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The Accra daily said the ministry was now reviewing its policies and programmes in order to devise strategies to ensure the target was met.
“Even though rice production over the past five years has averaged about 135,00 metric tonnes of milled rice, an average of about US $100 million is used annually to import rice to supplement local production in spite of the declining foreign exchange availability,” Samuel Dapaah, chief director of the ministry, was quoted as saying in the capital, Accra.
Dapaah said the government planned to develop more than one million ha of inland valleys for rice production so as to make the country self-sufficient in the grain. The acreage now devoted to rice is about 130,000 ha, he added.
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