National Food Buffer Stock Company to expand storage space
The National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) will add 50,000 tonnes of storage space to its storage capacity by the end of this year as a means of shoring up the national buffer stock.
The company’s existing storage facilities have space for only 33,000 tonnes of food.
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The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAFCO, Mr Hanan Abdul Wahab, told the Daily Graphic in an interview in Accra yesterday that three of the additional warehouses were ready for use.
Each warehouse has a storage capacity of 1,000 tonnes.
He said the other warehouses earmarked were at various stages of completion.
The ministries of Special Development Initiatives and Food and Agriculture are respectively responsible for the 50,000 and the 30,000 tonne capacity warehouses across the country.
“Rice, maize, soya bean, millet, cowpea and peanuts will be stored in the warehouses,” Mr Abdul-Wahab disclosed.
He said the government had so far awarded contracts for the construction of warehouses that had the capacity to store 80,000 tonnes of food.
Job creation
According to the CEO of NAFCO, there would be more jobs created across the country, particularly in the informal sector, when the warehouses were completed.
He told the Daily Graphic that collaboration between NAFCO and the Ministry of Education to provide senior high schools with foodstuffs and other products under the government’s free senior high school policy was ongoing.
He said the licences of 150 food suppliers were revoked last year for failing to meet NAFCO’s standards regarding the supply of quality foodstuffs to schools.
Vision and infrastructure
Mr Abdul-Wahab said his vision was to move NAFCO to the level where it would be able to deal with all food insecurity situations in Ghana and the West African sub-region.