The president of the Peasant Farmers Association, Charles Nyaaba, has revealed that, as farmers, they have mixed feelings about the 2024 budget concerning agriculture.
Mr Nyaaba lauded the decision to restore the waiver of import duties on agriculture inputs and the allocation of more than 200 million cedis to victims of the Akosombo Dam spillage.
He says that, apart from these few positives, most of the expectations were not met.
In an interview with the media, Mr. Nyaaba said, “On our part as peasant farmers, we have mixed feelings about the whole thing; there are a few positives in the budget we must acknowledge, and there are other expectations we were hoping to see that didn’t happen.
The government is granting exemptions to people who are bringing farm inputs, and that’s something we must commend the Ministry of Finance.
We were expecting that looking at the crucial role of agriculture, we would see the significant allocation of such resources to support agriculture.”
Commenting on the government’s flagship program, Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ), Mr. Nyaaba stated that phase one of the program was a failure, and care must be taken so that the same fate doesn’t affect phase two of the program.
“We also look at the PFJ 2. The PFJ 2 is a bit of a deviation from the PFJ 1, and it came to be due to some recommendations that people like us and other stakeholders should avoid the failure of PFJ 1,” he said.
