The government of Ghana has placed restrictions on the exports of 2 major commodities from the country: soya beans and maize, which are both essential food crops.
According to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, this is one of the steps being taken to assure food security while also increasing local poultry and livestock production.
The Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Directorate (PPRSD), has stopped issuing phytosanitary certificates for the export of both commodities.
This follows a directive from the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) to restrict their export to ensure the availability of the product, whose production is subsidized.
“Over the past two years, since the advent of Covid-19, we had to endure a lot of challenges so, in order to ensure that the local demand is met, there was the need to promulgate a law to ensure that any individual that wants to export soybeans from this country has to come for a permit.”
As a result of recent statistics from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) suggesting an increase in the price of food, there have been fears about a probable food scarcity in the country, among other things.
These assertions however have been dismissed by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.