Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, John Dumelo, says government will review existing cross-border trade arrangements while rolling out new measures to protect Ghanaian tomato traders operating in Burkina Faso and other countries.

Speaking on The Pulse on Tuesday, 17 February, Mr Dumelo said that efforts to stabilise tomato supply and reduce Ghana’s reliance on imports require a careful review of existing cross-border trade arrangements.

He acknowledged that while cross-border trade remains vital, it must be reassessed to address current gaps and challenges.

“It has to be re-looked at, it has to be re-evaluated and see, you know, our shortcomings or the shortcomings of other authorities. The truth of the matter is that we cannot stop cross-border trade. Of course, we do encourage a lot of cross-border trade.”

He stressed that tomatoes are highly perishable, making trader protection even more critical.

“All in all, we value some of these security measures that have been in place and see how best we can protect our traders. I don't personally want to bring up those two issues, but they are perishable assets.”

According to him, government will soon announce immediate interventions aimed at safeguarding traders who travel to Burkina Faso and other relatively unstable countries.

“In the next couple of days, we’ll definitely announce some of the measures that we’ve taken to protect these traders who go to Burkina Faso and other countries that are a little bit unstable. In the coming days, we’ll be announcing some of the measures.”

Mr Dumelo disclosed that he will be engaging directly with traders to better understand their concerns.

“I just came back from the Bono East region, but I’ll be going back to be able to interact with the traders and see how best we can help them to solve our problems, our tomato demand in Ghana.”

The Deputy Minister revealed that government has a long-term plan to cut Ghana’s dependency on tomatoes from Burkina Faso by between 20 and 30 percent beginning next year.

Irrigation expansion in the northern parts of the country forms a key part of that strategy.

“When you look at some of our irrigation schemes, especially the ones in the north — when you go to Tono Dam, around the Navrongo area — currently most of the farmers are farming tomatoes, but it’s on a much smaller scale. It’s more or less like a trial stage where we want to scale it up before the year ends or next year.”

He noted that similar efforts are underway across other irrigation schemes, with farmers expected to harvest within the next few months.

“If you also go to our irrigation schemes, there are some tomato-growing farmers there, as we speak, that would have their tomatoes maybe in about two or three months’ time. All these schemes are the ones that we want to scale up, hopefully by next year.”

Government has also distributed irrigation equipment to support vegetable farmers nationwide.

“We’ve distributed some solar — or we’re about to distribute some solar water pumps to vegetable farmers across the country. And then the water pumps that the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources seized from galamsey operators — we distributed some last year, over a thousand of them, to small-scale vegetable farmers across the country.”

He expressed optimism that the combined interventions would significantly boost local production.

“Hopefully, when all these come on board, we’ll be able to mitigate our production of tomatoes and other vegetables across the country.”

In addition, Mr Dumelo revealed that a private company is cultivating about 6,000 acres of tomatoes, which is expected to further strengthen domestic supply.

“I’m very hopeful that next year, by this time, most of the trips that are going to Burkina Faso will reduce. When all these programmes come on board, hopefully we’ll be able to reduce our traders from going to Burkina Faso to get tomatoes.”

Mr Dumelo maintained that while cross-border trade will continue, increasing local production remains the sustainable solution to stabilising supply and protecting Ghanaian traders.