The Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) has reaffirmed its dedication to playing a crucial role in promoting trade through a structured market.
Over the past five years, the GCX has facilitated the trade of over 50,000 metric tons of essential commodities, such as maize, valued at more than 200 million Ghanaian cedis.
Speaking at the inaugural Ghana Commodities Symposium, which was part of activities to mark the GCX’s fifth anniversary, CEO of the Ghana Commodity Exchange, Setutsi Ivowi, highlighted the significant strides made in shaping the agricultural trade landscape.
She also mentioned plans to expand the range of agricultural products traded on the exchange, including cocoa, a commodity that has been a focus since the exchange’s inception.
The expansion of traded commodities aims to help Ghana transition from being a price-taking nation to a price-making one, enabling the country to have more influence in the global market.
GCX has been in discussions with various institutions, such as Cocobod, and the International Cocoa Organization, to facilitate this change.
“Cocoa is one of those commodities we’ve spoken about actually since the inception of the exchange. The President of the republic has envisioned that cocoa would be a stronger commodity in Ghana. We don’t want to be price takers, we want to be price makers and a commodity exchange can help that in terms of facilitating real price discovery.
So we’ve been in discussion for some with CMC, with Cocobod, with other institutions such as the International Cocoa Organization, Minister for Food and Agriculture is very much in support.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Bryan Acheampong, Minister for Food and Agriculture, addressed the challenges faced by smallholder farmers and the need to address them.
He emphasized the importance of establishing a nationally consistent system for weighing and standardizing the quality and quantity of commodities, as well as addressing the issue of mixing different qualities of goods and selling them based on volume rather than weight or quality.
“Farmers are not the only ones facing the problems in our traditional agriculture marketing chain, the seeming lack of a nationally consistent system for the weight and standardization of the quality and quantity of the commodity is one of the foremost problems that we have in Ghana. Various qualities of commodities’ goods are mixed together and are often sold according to the volume rather than the weight or quality of the product.”