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Rice farmers cry foul

Local rice producers have warned they will lose out massively on benefits of the ECOWAS Common External Tariff to the rice industry if efforts are not aimed at resolving challenges confronting them.

Rice importation to Ghana still attracts a twenty percent charge at the ports despite the implementation of the CET.

Head of tax policy unit of the Ministry of Finance, Anthony Dzadzraa tells Citi Business News, the move is to enable local rice producers improve on quality so they can be able to compete within five years time when government may be compelled to reduce the current charge to ten percent.

But in an interview with Citi Business News, a rice farmer and the Director of Network of Rice Farming Associations, NETRICE, Amishadai Owusu fears they risk losing out if the local rice producers are not adequately resourced to aid fair competition.

“Locally what kind of equipment do we have to compete with China or Thailand or any other country? In a whole district we have about three or four tractors. We should have our swamps developed; our swamps are not developed and they are full of stumps, and it is rather impossible for mechanized agriculture,

“We also require driers to be able to dry and de-stone the rice, because of our threshing methods, our rice is full of stones and particles as such we cannot compete with any of the countries in the developed world,” he observed.

Source: citifmonline.com

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