Review of Ghana’s poultry sector trade policy under way
22 June 2014
In May 2014, the President of Ghana made a commitment to poultry farmers that the government would use a combination of production support measures and trade measures to boost Ghanaian poultry production. He spoke of turning Ghana into “a net exporter of poultry products in the coming years”.
At the same time, the current import policy is being reviewed. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has been in dialogue with the Ghana Poultry Farmers Association since February 2013 to explore how Ghana’s import permit system could be used to curb high levels of imports of poultry products.
In March 2014, following consultations with producers, financiers, marketers and processors, the government made a commitment to tighten import licensing procedures. In May, this resulted in an announcement by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) that importers would only be awarded an import licence to bring poultry meat into Ghana if they first procured 40% of their required amount from local producers.
Similarly, the government is also looking to promote greater use of locally sourced inputs to the poultry sector, with MOFA arguing that the issuing of permits would be used to open up markets for local companies.
Alongside these trade measures, efforts continue to improve local poultry feed supplies. These include exploring the scope to use cassava in poultry feed and the provision of financial assistance to feed-related investments, such as recent assistance to the Greater Accra Poultry Farmers Association to establish “a five-tonne integrated poultry feed mill”. The government is also considering support for an initiative by the Ghana National Association of Farmers aimed at producing 70 million broilers in the fifth year of the scheme, requiring up to 350,000 tonnes of feed.
These plans need to be seen against a background of current poultry meat production levels that meet only 10% of Ghana’s consumer demand.
Editorial comment
Ghana’s recent poultry sector trade policy initiative follows the government’s announcement of its willingness to more actively use trade policy tools once the institutional infrastructure for the management of international trade is in place (via the country’s planned International Trade Commission) (see Agritrade article ‘ Government of Ghana to review poultry and rice sector trade policies’, 17 May 2014)
The use of import licence allocations to strengthen the functioning of local supply chains has proved successful in other ACP countries in other sectors, most notably in the Namibian horticulture sector.
In Namibia, intense dialogue between stakeholders along the supply chain was required to lay the foundation for the progressive extension of local procurement requirements. A similar process of consultation has been initiated in Ghana and a poultry council formed to regulate the sector.
However, central to the success of the Namibian scheme was the establishment of realistic local procurement targets, based on current and evolving production capacities. Initially, local procurement targets were low (5% of import requests) and were only gradually expanded once investment in the required volume and quality of production came on stream. This suggests a need to carefully graduate targets for local procurement of Ghanaian poultry products in line with current and evolving production capacities. In this context, the Ghanaian government is setting up complementary supply-side initiatives to improve local supplies of poultry products.
A further important element of the Namibian horticulture scheme was the strong private sector engagement with a transparent import permit allocation process, through a statutory body in which private sector stakeholders were fully represented. Similar transparent institutional mechanisms for the allocation of import permits under the proposed scheme would appear to be necessary in Ghana to maintain stakeholder commitment to the new scheme. The Poultry Council could potentially play this role, although it would need to be legally entrenched.
Overshadowing the new approach is uncertainty as to whether it is consistent with Ghana’s EPA commitments. Article 18 commits the Ghanaian government to eliminating “all prohibitions or restrictions on import or export between the Parties… whether made effective through quotas, import or export licences or other measures… upon the entry into force of this Agreement”.
