The Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto says the importation of maize is expected to reduce in the next three years.

Speaking at a press briefing on Sunday, he said a reduction can be achieved if the rate of production in the country is maintained.

"...this figure is expected to vanish in the next three years so or so we continue to produce at the rate we are doing ,"he said.

According to him, since NPP resumed office, there has been a drastic reduction in maize importation as compared to statistics available for 2015 and 2016.

“In 2015 Ghana imported over 100,000 that’s 113, 000, 114, 000 metric tonnes of maize and then to nearly 80,000 metric tonnes of maize in 2016. When we came on imports of maize have virtually vanished, it went down from 80,000 to 40,000 in 2017 to 80,000 in 2018 and then these 2019, 2020 as special maize needed for poultry production which is the type we cannot produce in Ghana otherwise you would have zero in these two places,” he said.

Dr Afriyie Akoto said the drought which occurred in 2020 also contributed to less production of maize making the prices shoot up.

“On the wholesale prices, we see that the trends of annual average whole sale prices for white maize in 2016 to 2020 that the trend is falling price of maize at the wholesale level people are now complaining about the expensive price of maize. For 2020, it went up to 155 which is more or less what it was in 2015 ...The effect of the drought reduced production and also the increase in exports to neighboring countries.

He said the country also exports huge volumes of maize to other neighboring countries but the drought reduced the exportation of maize.

“You can see from 2015 to 2020 maize exports was 11,000 metric tonnes per year. In 2015, 2016 it jumped nearly 20,000 metric tonnes 2017, 23,000 in 2018 and it went down to 14,000 and 17,000.”