Principal Statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service, John Foster Agyaho, says a quick way to fix the current food inflation situation is for the government to absorb the transportation cost of food products from farms to markets.

According to him, food prices and lorry fares are currently major contributors to the food inflation situation in the country, and thus by addressing transport, it would mitigate the effects of the inflation on consumers.

He noted that currently, the government has started rolling out a programme where cargo trucks are being provided to transport food from the farms to the market, however, more needs to be done for results to be felt within the shortest possible time.

“The short term fixes are like what we can do immediately to absorb the transportation cost for food products, and I know that the government has started that by trying to provide cargo trucks for people to cart goods from the farm gate to market centers,” he said.

He also said the Bank of Ghana needs to be encouraged to provide enough foreign exchange to halt the free fall of the cedi while simultaneously also mitigating imported inflation.

“Then again we could also encourage the Central Bank to do the magic by providing enough forex in the system. This way those who do the import items will have enough, it will help stabilize the cedi and therefore we will have lesser imported inflation.”

Finally, the Statistician called for broader sensitization with traders and people within the food value chain so they do not take undue advantage of the current situation to inflate the price of goods.

According to him, much of the current problem with food inflation in the country is also as a result of human behavioral tendencies.

“And I think another short term fix that we could do and as we have started is also to begin some education. Once we begin to educate the people around the challenges that we face so that people don’t take undue advantage, I’m pretty sure the next one or two months we should see a turnaround.”

“Luckily nature has taken advantage for us, now we are entering the harvest season. So if we do this and try to control transport and then we lower the expectation of consumers and sellers I’m sure we will be out of the woods,” he said.