GH¢6m Investment in poultry gone bad

Poultry farmers are threatening a legal showdown with the government to help force a refund of GH¢6 million that was used to finance the pilot phase of the Ghana Broiler Revitalisation Programme (GHABROP) launched in 2014.

The money is a loan that was taken by Boris B’s Farms and Veterinary Supplies Limited from Barclays Bank Ghana Limited and was used to support the GHABROP, a partnership between the government, through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), and the Ghana National Poultry Farmers Association (GNAPF).

Although the principal of the loan and its interest have risen to GH¢8 million, Boris B’s and the poultry farmers say the proceeds have yielded just GH¢2 million, not enough to retire even the principal.

However after benefiting from the funds and its proceeds, the farmers said the government had now failed to reimburse the financier, contrary to its pledge.

This gesture amounts to bad faith and could serve as a disincentive to prospective investors seeking to venture into the ailing poultry industry, the National Chairman of the GNAPF, Mr Victor Oppong-Adjei, told the Graphic Business in Accra.

Mr Oppong-Adjei thus called on the government to honour its pledge to help relieve the financier and the association of the financial burden.

Ex deputy minister disagrees

In response, however, a former Deputy Minister at the MoFA in charge of Livestock, Dr Louisa Hannah Bissiw, said the government did not enter into any agreement with the poultry farmers and Boris B’s that required the government to refund any money.

Rather, she said the two parties – the GNAPF and Boris B’s – organised their project before they informed the government to support them to revive the ailing industry.

After realising that the GHABROP was a good project that could help cut imports and raise consumption of domestically produced birds to 40 per cent, Dr Bissiw said, the government decided to support it by creating an enabling environment that would make it successful.

 “Under the project, what we agreed to do was to ensure some kind of quota in the form of legislation, to help facilitate the progression of the project,” she stated.

She observed that the ministry only sent a letter of appreciation to the financier for his contribution to the development of the poultry industry in Ghana, something she said could not amount to a contract.

“We never entered into any contract with neither the GNAPF nor the financier to pre-fund the project for the government to reimburse him at the end of it,” she added.

 Mode of investment

While failing to provide documentary proof of any contract between the private sector and the government, the national chairman of the GNAPF, which is the umbrella body of poultry farmers, said the association had sent a letter to the MoFA, requesting them to address fading fortunes of the poultry farmers.

Upon approval from the MoFA, Mr Oppong-Adjei said, the association contracted Boris B’s to fund the project.

“The project was an initiative jointly carried by MoFA and GNAPF to create market space for broiler production,” he said.

He observed that the project was aimed at producing about 300,000 broiler birds, and it was unveiled by Dr Bissiw.

After the first phase of production, the chairman noted that although the financier encountered several challenges, it was able to make payment to all farmers, input sellers and processors.

Some months into the project, Mr Oppong-Adjei said the ministry established a committee to market the birds and lodge proceeds of the sale of the birds into an account of the financier.

“In August 2016, we received a letter from the financier, indicating that the marketing committee had not been able to lodge enough money into the account for the financier to recoup the investment they made,” he noted.

Consequently, the chairman said, the association made attempts to reach Dr Bissiw to seek an amicable solution to the issue, but that failed.

Unfair import poultry product

When contacted, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Boris B’s Farms and Veterinary Supplies Limited, Mr Boris Baidoo, blamed the limited success of the project on the inability of the government to prevent cheap imports from coming into the country.

“The project is currently at a halt and we have run into various degrees of losses as a result of government’s inactions,” he added.

However, the paper could not readily get the response of the current leadership at the MoFA on the issue.