Senyo Hosi calls on Agric Minister Dr Afriyie Akoto to resign

Former Chief Executive of the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD), Mr Senyo Hosi, has told the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, to resign in order to save the crucial sector from collapse.

This was contained in a strongly-worded letter, he wrote to chide what he deems the inept manner in which the Ministry has been run, coupled with the hubris and intransigence from the Minister’s Office.

He accused the Ministry of engaging in arm-chair analysis, clothed in a “culture of ‘knowing everything’, without adequate consultations and collaborations with industry.”

He warns that this “will take this country nowhere.”

Mr Hosi accused the Ministry of ignoring several correspondences, following a proposal by the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Dr Sagre Bambangi, for a collaboration “to help achieve a constructive example of investment success in rice production.”

Following this, Senyo Hosi wrote, “if you were really concerned about the commercial and social viability of investments in the sector as you seem to express, you would have been more responsible than ignore communication from one of the biggest rice investors in that district, region and the country.”

He, therefore, denounced the leadership of the Ministry under Dr Akoto, saying, “I therefore do not find your Ministry under the current leadership an honest policy partner in the development of my business to warrant any submission of my investment details for your consideration.”

He declared the tenure of the Minister as a failure, based on the Ministry’s “failure to structure the agricultural industry through policy to make it sustainably bankable and attractive for investment, to achieve the transformation we seek as a country.”

Hosi dared the Minister to “tell the people of Ghana, which single major subsector you have effectively de-risked, restructured and nurtured to promote sustainable investment, and make Ghana a leader in that space.”

As a parting shot, he encouraged the Minister to audit the production, yield, investment, and subsidy deployment information which his outfit publishes.

He bemoaned the mediocre analytical capacity of MoFA, “despite being led by a PhD Agric-Economist, pointing to the Ministry’s equation of the distribution of fertilizer to a given quantum of employment.

“Since when did the distribution of fertilizer become a yardstick for acquiring employment data on a major policy intervention as the Planting for Food and Jobs?” he wondered.

His letter was in response to a press release that the Ministry issued on October 30, in response to earlier arguments he had made at a recently held Agribusiness dialogue.