Food inflation: Find alternatives to PFJ market – Economist

Economist, Professor Peter Quartey has called on the government to find alternatives to the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) market to deal with the rising food inflation.

According to him, the PFJ market set up at the Ministry of Agriculture’s premises has failed to deal with the high cost of food items.

Data from the Ghana Statistical Service on inflation rate for November revealed that food inflation has risen to 55.3%, from October’s rate of 43.7% while non-food inflation also shot up by 7.2% to 46.5%.

The overall inflation rate for the month of November hit 50.3 percent.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Professor Peter Quartey said the government must find other alternatives to stem the continuous rise of food inflation.

“We could have done better than that [PFJ Market]. We had food distribution companies that had outlets across different parts of the country, especially the urban areas, so if we want to go that route I expect the Minister of Agriculture to work through either the Buffer Stock company or have some of these distribution outlets. But if you just centralise on the Ministry, how many people can go to the ministry to purchase food items.”

The data from the Ghana Statistical Service also revealed that on a regional level, the Eastern region recorded the highest inflation rate of 63.3%. This was followed by the Greater Accra region with an inflation rate of 61.6%.

The consumer price index, which measures a wide basket of goods and services rose to 0.3% percentage points month-on-month.

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