The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) is thinking about providing fuel subsidies to transportation companies and their owners so they can convey goods to market hubs.
The cost of transporting food from the production areas to metropolitan centres is anticipated to be reduced by giving carriers discounted gasoline vouchers.
In Sunyani on Monday, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, stated that this had become essential owing to the rising costs of food in metropolitan areas, which, according to food merchants, were caused by the rising cost of transportation.
The minister stated, "We are developing mechanisms so that a means will be discovered to reduce the transportation cost of goods, so that foodstuffs will be offered cheaper in the satellite markets and so force down prices in the conventional markets.
He claimed that although food was generally more affordable in markets located in agricultural regions, it had become more costly in metropolitan areas.
Satellite industries
He described how, as part of the measures, the ministry would arrange for the transportation of food from the farming regions to a few selected metropolitan centres, where it would be sold in quantity at reasonable rates to pressure the open market prices to decline.
Dr. Akoto stated that municipal and metropolitan assemblies in the chosen urban regions would be requested to set up satellite markets from which wholesalers, retailers, and consumers could purchase food.
Modalities
He said that action was taken in response to a stakeholders' meeting in Accra to discuss ways to lower the growing costs of food in urban regions.
"We feel that once we start putting what we are fashioning out into practise and foodstuffs are offered below what is prevalent in other marketplaces in the metropolitan regions, foodstuff vendors would be forced to cut down their rates," he added.
He said that his visit of the marketplaces in the agricultural regions had demonstrated that there was adequate food in the system, particularly grains.
Despite increased prices for agricultural chemicals and oil on the international market, which had a detrimental effect on food production, he said, the difference in food prices between rural and urban regions remained incomprehensible.
Comparison
Prices in the producing and consuming regions differ by nearly three times, according to Dr. Akoto.
He said it was incomprehensible that the same basket of the product was selling for between GH400 and GH500 in Kumasi yet the same basket was going for GH150 in Techimantia, in the Ahafo Region.
He said that the growing expense of food in cities was incompatible with both the rise in food production and the transit of food from farms to cities. The minister claimed that because of these elements, the ministry last week convened a meeting with all interested parties to discuss the matter, including market queens, drivers, parkers, and transport owners.
From the farm gate to the merchants, the food distribution and transportation chain should be generating super-normal profits, according to him.
The impact on low income earners in metropolitan areas, he claimed, made the administration very concerned about the growing cost of food.
He said that the government was certain that the next 2022 harvest of agricultural crops will also contribute to a decrease in food costs.