The National Food Buffer Stock Company Limited (NAFCo) says it has largely cleared its arrears for 2022, leaving only GH¢30 million in outstanding.
The payment, it said represented about 85 per cent of its total indebtedness to suppliers for the period 2022.
Taking his turn at the bi-weekly minister’s briefing organised by the Ministry of Information in Accra yesterday, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAFCo, Mr Hanan Abdul-Wahab, said the first tranche of GH¢100 million was released on July 17 by the government with additional GH¢80 million being released this month (August) for payment.
He explained that the payment represented businesses done between the NAFCo and its licensed suppliers from 2017 to 2022, adding that “Out of that, how much we owe suppliers is what is currently in the system which had resulted in the picketing.”
Mr Abdul-Wahab said following the picketing by some of its suppliers some two months ago, the government released monies for arrears owed the suppliers and 85 per cent of the amount had been paid to them.
“We don’t owe suppliers any arrears except 2022 and the supplies currently ongoing for the year 2023. GH¢2.7billion has been paid so far and what is left now to pay suppliers is less than GH¢30million. What we need to clear the 2022 arrears is less than GH¢30million,” he emphasised.
Mr Abdul-Wahab explained that NAFCo had received GH¢2.7 billion from government between 2017 and 2022, for all businesses transacted between it and its licensed food suppliers.
He gave the assurance that the company would perform its mandate of ensuring that there were sufficient food items for the over 700 boarding senior high schools in the country to enable the 1.2 million students under the Free SHS Policy to be fed adequately.
Mr Abdul-Wahab stated that NAFCo was the only institution mandated by government to supply 18 different food items to the 700 boarding senior high schools.
The food items he said included; maize, beans, peanuts, millet, soya beans and rice as well as locally processed food items like gari, edible palm oil, Tom Brown, tin tomatoes and processed cocoa powder.
Touching on some activities undertaken by the company over the period, he said it had undertaken a number of policy interventions and programmes to prevent post-harvests losses and to ensure stable prices for food items purchased from suppliers.
Mr Abdul-Wahab listed some of the programmes as the One District, One Warehouse project to construct 80 warehouses with 1000 metric tonnes (MT) capacity nationwide.
He added that 60 of these warehouses had been completed under the first phase of the project.
In addition to this he said there were ongoing rehabilitation works on other warehouses across the country and these included the 5,000 MT capacity warehouse in Duase, 2,500 MT warehouse capacity in Sunyani, 1,300 MT warehouse in Wenchi and 2,500 MT at Yendi.
He expressed NAFCo’s commitment to contribute its quota to the development of agricultural business value chain from harvesting, transportation, processing, storage and distribution.
He said NAFCo would continue to explore opportunities in the agricultural value chain to ensure the benefits of establishing it was fully realised.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
