In response to the press release issued by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture on 30th October 2022 with the title; “Rejoinder: Mr. Senyo Hosi, loss of millions of Ghana cedis in Agricultural
Investment using data from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture”, Senyo Hosi has respectfully called on the Minister and the Chief Director of the Ministry of Agric to resign.
According to him, as an investor who has one of the biggest rice farms in the country of 1,350 acres, his outfit has not received any data request on production from MOFA. Conferring with many of
his colleagues in the industry, MOFA has requested little to no data on their productivity.
Moreover, MOFA has at no time assessed their production levels despite the challenges they faced, and the same can be said for many other players in the rice sector. The culture of collecting installed mechanical capacity of mills cannot be a proxy for actual production.
Therefore, the question is, how did the Ministry come across the data on its website that Ghana produces 43% of its rice needs?
He asserted that the Rice Millers Association even doubt the data provided by the Ministry hence the Ministry should produce the methodology used to attain such data.
“Often, at the Rice Millers Association level, we have wondered your source of data. So, maybe, you should tell the people of Ghana your methodology for drawing or reaching the estimates you make”, the release stated.
“Respectfully, the arm-chair analysis the Minister and/or MOFA does with a culture of ‘knowing everything’, without adequate consultations and collaborations with industry, will take this country nowhere. Your conduct and management of this matter is suboptimal and respectfully, proves your unfitness to lead in the policy space for this sector. It is no wonder that we have spent billions of cedis and yielded sub-optimal effects, under all kinds of sloganeering and questionable data reportage”, the statement continued.
