Allocate 10% of annual budget to agric sector’

Policy makers have been asked to allocate not less than 10 per cent of the government’s annual budget to the agriculture sector. Such a move, they believe, would help increase production in the agric sector by at least by six per cent annually.

Proponents have said that the 10 per cent, which is one of the tenets of the Maputo Declaration, 2003, should be met from the onset and any other input based on availability of resources.

The General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU) of the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC), Mr Edward Kareweh, in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra, on their expectations of an improved agriculture sector, said unless such a far-reaching tenet was upheld to transform agriculture, it would remain largely same.

Agric budget
Mr Kareweh deduced that since the 2017 budget had already been determined, the government could come out with a supplementary budget to realign current budget to meet their developmental goal.

“What they can do is to make adequate budgetary allocation for the various areas of expenditure. For agriculture in particular, if you look at the broad budget figure, it could sometimes give wrong meaning in the sense that you have to know how much is going into real investment, capacity building and some other services which are not directly bring about  increase in output,” he said.

He said the portion of the agriculture budget allocated for real investment had to be looked at critically because they are rather used for personnel emoluments, consultancy fees among others.

“If you take a chunk of the budget, then it may be broad but if you look at what actually goes to real investment within the sector, then it becomes too small and we don’t get the effect that we have wanted,” he said.

Sector growth
Official statistics show that the agricultural sector employed almost 56 per cent of the total population.
In the 2016 budget, allocation to the sector declined from GH¢395.19 million in 2015 to GH¢355.14 million, representing a decrease of about 10 per cent (GH¢40 million).

The sector contributed 22.4 per cent to GDP in 2013 but declined to 21.5 per cent in 2014. Again in 2010, the sector contributed 29.9 per cent to GDP; declined to 25.6 per cent in 2011 and further to 22.7 per cent in 2012.

However, growth in 2015 was 0.04 per cent. Also in the 2015 budget statement, the agriculture sector showed signs of recovery, growing from 2.3 per cent in 2012 to 5.2 per cent in 2013 and then to 5.3 per cent in 2014.

The growth was on account of the forestry and logging sub-sectors in which growth rebounded from a negative 0.04 per cent in 2013 to a 16.5 per cent in 2014. The Fisheries sub-sector also maintained its recent positive growth path, growing by 7.1 per cent in 2014 up from 5.8 per cent in 2013.

The crops sub-sector, however, experienced a decline, growing at 3.6 per cent down from 5.9 per cent in 2013.

The Maputo Declaration, 2003
In July 2003 in Maputo, Mozambique, African Heads of States met and endorsed a Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa and also adopted the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework.

A cardinal component of the declaration is that African countries will allocate and implement increases in spending on agriculture to at least 10 per cent of their annual budgets by 2008.

According to the declaration, such increase in budgetary allocations to agriculture was to give meaning to the CAADP with the goal to help African countries reach a higher path of economic growth through agriculture-led development, which eliminates hunger, reduces poverty, food and nutrition insecurity and enables the expansion of exports.