A flagbearer hopeful of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Owusu Akoto Afriyie, believes farmers could help save the country from what he described as “clutches of borrowing”.
He said the country could tap into resources provided by farmers to fund the country’s development instead of going on a borrowing spree which negatively affects the economy in the short run.
The Akufo-Addo’s government has been accused by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) of borrowing and spending recklessly thus plunging the economy into an abyss.
Addressing a gathering at UPSA in Accra on Monday, March 13, the flagbearer hopeful said, “what I have learnt working with Ghanaian farmers in the past six years especially, is that they need little persuasion to be called into action. The minimal incentive of the PFJ subsidy and others was enough to generate unprecedented growth in the sector (8.4% in 2021)”.
He added that, “such hard work of the Ghanaian farmers represents a resource that the nation ought to tap into to get us out of the clutches of borrowing to finance our development”.
Dr. Afriyie Akoto appealed to Ghanaians to go into farming to salvage the country from borrowing adding that agriculture is a means to an end for the country.
“I am appealing to all of us that we go back to the land because it is the land that birthed civilization on earth. And, it is how we use the God-given land that will take us to the status of a first world that we all wish to become. Mr. Chairman, I must reiterate here that Agriculture is the means to our end,” he said. CNR