As food inflation in the country continues to rise, further pushing national inflation to unprecedented levels, 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.
According to the CSIR, this will eventually make food available all year, lowering prices and controlling food inflation.
While the national inflation rate for April is 23.6 per cent, it is vital to understand that food inflation accounts for 50% of the national rate, according to data from the Ghana Statistical Service.
Oils and Fats had the highest year-over-year inflation rate of 43.4 per cent among the 15 food subcategories. Water, cereal items, and fruits and vegetables all had inflation rates of 42.1 per cent, 31.5 per cent, and 30.1 per cent, respectively.
Coffee and Coffee Substitutes had the lowest rate of food inflation, at 18.5 per cent, between April 2021 and April 2022.
In an interview with Citi Business News, CSIR Director-General Prof. Paul Bosu said that, despite an increase in the number of storage facilities, the government must now look into the effective transportation of food items from the hinterlands to storage facilities across the country to ensure that food stored during peak seasons is made available during lean seasons to keep prices stable.
“Post-harvest losses are still a problem for us.” We can blame the problem on our transportation and storage infrastructure, though the latter has undergone significant improvements thanks to the government. So the storage facilities are fine, but now we need to devote resources to places where farmers are having difficulty transporting their gathered crops to storage facilities. This will assist to keep prices stable because food will be available all year.”