Claim: Former Member of Parliament for Manhyia North, Collins Owusu Amankwah, says that Ghana recorded negative growth in the Agriculture sector under the leadership of the National Democratic Congress.
Verdict: Data from the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Statistical Service do not support the claim by the ruling New Patriotic Party member.
Full Text
Former Manhyia North Member of Parliament Collins Owusu Amankwa says that the current government, led by President Akufo-Addo, needs to be commended for restoring hope and making the Agriculture sector more attractive to Ghanaians.
The former lawmaker believes it is unfair for members of the main opposition party to criticize the government’s agriculture performance, considering the various initiatives it has introduced to spearhead growth in the sector.
Whilst showering praises on the government, he claimed that negative growth was recorded in the Agriculture sector when the National Democratic Congress was in office.
“Look at how they have been bastardizing programmes initiated by the government, including the 1 District – 1 Factory initiative, which has led to the establishment of over 300 factories at various stages of completion. It is so painful that when they [NDC] get the opportunity to speak, they criticise the government so badly as though we are doing nothing,” he commented.
“Under the NDC, we witnessed a negative growth in Agriculture, but with the introduction of the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative, hope has been restored to local farmers,” Collins Amankwa said when he appeared as a guest on “The Platform Show” on Accra-based Peace FM 104.3FM.
His comments, originally in the Akan language, were translated into English for the sake of this report. His statement can be found between minutes 1:23:47:00 and 1:24:40 of the show, which was live-streamed on Facebook.
Verification
Data from the Ministry of Finance (MoFEP), annual budget statements, and National Accounts Statistics reports from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) were relied on for this work.
Even though Collins Amankwah was not specific about which NDC administration he was referring to, we limited our investigation to 2009-2016, which covers the tenure of Prof John Atta Mills (2009-2012) and John Mahama (2013-2016), which was within the context of the comments he made.
In perusing the documents from the Finance Ministry and the Ghana Statistical Service, we observed that occasionally revisions were made to the figures. That notwithstanding, we found no instance in which negative growth was recorded in the Agriculture sector between 2009 and 2016.
Below is a tabular representation of recent data found to have been published by the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Statistical Service regarding Ghana’s Agricultural Sector growth between 2009 and 2016.
| Year | MoFEP | Document name | GSS | Document Name |
| 2009 | 6.2 | 2010 Budget Statement (Page 18) | 7.2 | Annual Gross Domestic Product report (April 2018 edition) Page 7. |
| 2010 | 5.3 | 2012 Budget Statement (Page 16/17) | 5.3 | |
| 2011 | 0.8 | 2013 Budget Statement (Page 22) | 0.8 | |
| 2012 | 2.3 | 2015 Budget Statement (Page 12) | 2.3 | |
| 2013 | 5.7 | 2016 Budget Statement (Page 14) | 5.7 | |
| 2014 | 0.9 | 2019 Budget Statement (Page 27) | 0.9 | Rebased 2013-2019 Annual Gross Domestic Product (April 2020 edition) Page 7 |
| 2015 | 2.3 | 2.3 | ||
| 2016 | 2.9 | 2.9 |
Conclusion
The claim made by the former Member of Parliament is false. Figures from the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Statistical Service show positive growth in the Agricultural sector between 2009 and 2016.
