The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is urging the government to invest in a comprehensive storage strategy to deal with post-harvest losses in the country as food inflation continues to rise, pushing national inflation to unprecedented levels.
The CSIR believes that by making food available all year, prices and food inflation will be kept under control.
While the national inflation rate is 23.6 percent in April, it is important to note that food inflation accounts for 50% of the national rate, according to Ghana Statistical Service data.
All the 15 food subclasses recorded positive year-on-year inflation with Oils and Fats, recording the highest of 43.4 per cent. Other sub-classes like Water, Cereal products as well as Fruits and Vegetables recorded inflation rates of 42.1 per cent, 31.5 per cent and 30.1 respectively.
The sub-class to record the least rate of food inflation of 18.5 per cent from April 2021 to April 2022 was Coffee and Coffee substitutes.
Speaking to Citi Business News, on ways to check the rising rate of food inflation, the Director-General at the CSIR, Professor Paul Bosu said, despite the improvement in the number of storage facilities, government needs to now look into the effective transportation of food items from the hinterlands to the storage facilities across the country to ensure food stored during peak seasons are made available in lean seasons to keep prices stable.
“We are still struggling with post-harvest losses. We can attribute the issue to our transportation systems and our storage systems, the latter however has seen massive improvements thanks to Government. So the storage facilities are ok, but now we need to commit resources to go into areas where farmers struggle to transport their harvested produce, to bring such produce to the storage facilities. This will help in stabilising prices as food will be available all year-round.” – Citibusinessnews.com
