The United Nations World Food Programme says it is concerned about the inability of some Ghanaians to buy the food they need for themselves and their families amid the novel coronavirus.

The WFP is worried that despite an increase in food production as a result of the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative, many are unable to afford it.

This morning the programme presented GHS1 million and electronic gadgets to the Agriculture Ministry to conduct rapid assessment of the impact of the pandemic on people’s ability to buy food.

WFP Representative in Ghana, Rukia Yacoub told JoyNews the assessment will help to establish the situation and inform social protection and other measures to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the vulnerable.

"We need this information to inform policy to help us prepare for what kind of response to be given," she said.

The World Food Programme and other partners also plan to support the Agric Ministry to undertake a nationwide comprehensive food security and vulnerability analysis which will provide more details on who the food insecure are, why they are food insecure and where they live.

The results of the assessment will be used to inform policy makers and prioritization of resource allocation.

George Harrison Opoku is Director, Statistics & Research at the Agric Ministry and says he has evidence to show that prices are rather dropping.

"From the second week in June to the third week in June, about 70% of price data that we collected show that prices have started coming down o the normal level... At the onset of the pandemic, prices showed some increases (because markets of restrictions in markets) so we were a bit scared, but after a while it reduced. " Mr Opoku said.

Items presented to the Ministry included Laptop computers, tablets, mobile phones, television sets, video conferencing facilities, PPEs, among others to help in data collection.