Government is hopeful the ban on some vegetables exported to the European Market will be lifted in September this year.

The European Union is expected to review the ban based on measures taken to ensure quality standards are met.

Director-in charge of Logistics and Value Chain at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Papa Kow Bartels said Ghana is making strides towards the lifting of the ban.

He made the comment at the opening of this year’s Vegetable Fair in Accra on the theme: “Promoting Quality and Healthy Vegetables for the Domestic and Export Markets”.

The two-day vegetable fair being organized by GhanaVeg is a programme initiated by the Netherlands Embassy to improve and sustain vegetable productivity in Ghana.

This year’s event saw 35 companies including exporters, vegetable retailers, suppliers of seeds and crops exhibiting their products and services.

Other participants provided advisory and extension services whiles the rest represented the processors consisting of dried and pasted vegetables and suppliers of equipments like greenhouses, cooling systems and irrigation equipment.

For her part, Senior Business Advisor at GhanaVeg, Shiela Assibey-Yeboah said Ghana has, since the ban, lost more than $2 million worth of exports of selected vegetables to the EU market.

She said it was to address the challenges that the Dutch government introduced the GhanaVeg programme to help the country deal with phytosanitary challenges, boost production and increase exports.

“GhanaVeg is contributing a lot, supporting the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Food and Agriculture, the Ghana Export Promotion Authority, as well as the logistics side, such as Aviance and Air Ghana, and research bodies to get to the field to see how best to fight the pest menace,” Mrs Assibey-Yeboah said.

A representative of The Netherlands Embassy in Ghana, Ms Mariska Lammers, said the embassy selected the vegetables sub-sector because of its mutual benefits to the two countries.

She said Ghana had a lot of potential in the vegetable sub-sector which could be harnessed to facilitate trade between Ghana and the EU.

Ms Lammers said the programme had done a lot of work through stakeholders to address the issues that led to the ban, but a lot of work remained to be done, especially at the farm level, involving mainly small-holder farmers.