By Obinna Chima with Agency Report

Following persistent complaints that some Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) have deliberately frustrated efforts by many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to access FX from the window created for small businesses in the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has barred all but eight banks from participating in the weekly SME wholesale spot and forwards interventions effective Tuesday.

Sources at the CBN disclosed that the banking system regulator took the decision to bar the erring banks based on field reports, which revealed that only eight banks had sold FX to the SME segment since the inception of the window.

According to a source, the CBN frowned on the action of the banks that declined to sell FX to SMEs to enable them import eligible finished and semi-finished items despite the availability of FX from the CBN wholesale intervention window.

Confirming the sanction, CBN spokesman, Isaac Okorafor, said the CBN’s management decided to bar banks that were yet to utilise any portion of the funds allocated by the CBN under the SME window, since its inception last month.

The affected banks will be barred from participating in the weekly wholesale spot and forwards interventions, he said.

He listed the banks not barred to include Access Bank Plc, Diamond Bank Plc, Fidelity Bank Plc, Heritage Bank, Jaiz Bank, Sterling Bank Plc, Unity Bank Plc and Zenith Bank Plc, warning that the CBN would not sit back and allow any form of instability in the interbank FX market through the actions of institutions or individuals.

He, however, disclosed that the action will be lifted immediately any of the affected banks show evidence of significant utilisation of the funds allocated to them under the SME window.

As an incentive, Okorafor said banks that had utilised their SME funds were allocated all of the $100 million sold at Tuesday’s wholesale auction.

He urged all stakeholders to play by the rules for the benefit of the country and the economy.

The CBN also sustained its intervention by injecting $196.2 million into the various segments of the FX market on Tuesday.

According to Okorafor, the central bank offered $100 million to authorised dealers during the wholesale auction.

A breakdown of the other interventions showed that the CBN made available $52 million to the SME segment, while invisibles such as personal and basic travel allowances, medicals and tuition got $44.2 million.

Okorafor also announced interventions in the retail auction window, which he said would be computed when the CBN receives requests made by customers to the CBN through their respective banks.

He also disclosed that the central bank would continue its weekly sale of $20,000 to dealers in the Bureau de Change (BDC) segment this week.

The spokesman expressed confidence that the interventions will continue to guarantee stability in the market and ensure availability to individuals and business concerns.

But as the CBN slammed the hammer on 14 lenders, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that foreign investors had begun to key in to the new FX window opened by the CBN last week to ease a severe shortage of dollars.

The naira’s depreciation in the window to almost the same level as the parallel rate means that the new market is already “nearing equilibrium,” Bloomberg quoted the chief executive of FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange, Mr. Bola ‘Koko’ Onadele as stating.

The central bank is ready to supply dollars to bond and stock investors, even for trades of as much as $100 million, he said.

“There’s already been interest from portfolio investors because they can see that the new window will have buyers and sellers determining the rate,” Onadele said in an emailed response to questions.

“The banks are talking to portfolio investors. Volumes will build up.”

The Investors’ and Exporters’ FX window, which started on April 24, is the central bank’s latest attempt to lure back investors who fled in the past two years, exacerbating a crisis that caused Nigeria’s economy to shrink in 2016 for the first time in a quarter of a century.

The idea is that by creating a market for some types of investment transactions, policy makers can satisfy calls to float the currency without risking an inflationary spiral that may come from a formal devaluation.

The naira opened on Monday at 380.31 per dollar in the window. That’s about 17 per cent weaker than the interbank rate of N315 and close to the rate of N391 on the parallel market, which many Nigerian businesses were forced to utilise as hard-currency supplies through official channels dried up.

Eligible transactions in the window include those for loan repayments, interest payments, capital repatriation and remittances.

While Nigeria devalued the naira on the interbank market last June, it stopped short of allowing a free float and intervened to prop up the exchange rate.

Investors, concerned that the currency was overvalued, have stayed on the sidelines: Nigerian stocks declined 33 per cent in dollar terms in the past year, the worst performance globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Onadele, a former chief trader at Citigroup Inc.’s Nigerian unit who criticized the central bank last October for leaning on dealers not to let the currency fall, said this time around CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele was relaxed about the weaker rate.

“The governor isn’t calling up, worrying about the rate,” Onadele said. “The central bank is ready to sell into this window, via the commercial banks. Any foreign portfolio investor that wants to leave Nigeria will get its money.

“If a foreign portfolio investor wants $100 million tomorrow, its bank should present the trade to the central bank. As long as the investor’s satisfied paying the rate, it will be done.”

The implication is that bond and stock investors would have to disregard the other exchange rates that now exist in Nigeria, with the central bank charging businesses different prices for foreign exchange depending on their needs.

“Foreign portfolio investors should ignore the multiple exchange rates,” he said. “This new window is the relevant one that applies to them. The way the central bank has matched sources of inflows and applications appears unorthodox, but it has ensured a smooth take off.”

Meanwhile, the Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) improved by 51.1 index points in April 2017, indicating an expansion in the manufacturing sector after three months of contraction.

This was revealed in the PMI report for April 2017 that was released by the CBN on Tuesday.

The PMI is an indicator of the economic health of the manufacturing sector.

The central bank’s increased dollar sales to banks in late February to try and curb FX shortages have impacted positively on the manufacturing sector.

The latest PMI report showed that 10 of the 16 sub-sectors reported growth in April in the following order: appliances & components; food, beverage & tobacco products; textile, apparel, leather & footwear; chemical & pharmaceutical products; cement; nonmetallic mineral products; printing & related support activities; furniture & related products; electrical equipment and plastics & rubber products.

Paper products; primary metal; computer & electronic products; fabricated metal products; petroleum & coal products and transportation equipment sub-sectors, however, reported a decline in the reviewed period.

Also, the report showed that the production level index for the manufacturing sector expanded for the second consecutive month in April.

The index at 58.5 points indicated an increase in production at a faster rate, compared to the 50.8 points in the previous month.

Similarly, 13 manufacturing sub-sectors recorded an increase in production levels during the review month in the following order: chemical & pharmaceutical products; electrical equipment; transportation equipment; food, beverage & tobacco products; appliances & components; textile, apparel, leather & footwear; cement; nonmetallic mineral products; printing & related support activities; furniture & related products; plastics & rubber products; computer & electronic products and fabricated metal products.

But the petroleum and coal products sub-sectors remained unchanged, while the primary metal and paper products sub-sectors recorded declines in production in April 2017.

However, the employment level index in April 2017 stood at 46.6 points, indicating a slowing decline in employment level after 26 consecutive months of decline.

Of the 16 sub-sectors, 12 recorded declines in employment in the following order: computer & electronic products; electrical equipment; cement; fabricated metal products; petroleum & coal products; nonmetallic mineral products; printing & related support activities; textile, apparel, leather & footwear; chemical & pharmaceutical products; plastics & rubber products; food, beverage & tobacco products and paper products.

By Innocent Ruwende

The Zimbabwe National Road Administration has released $1,7 million in emergency road funds to Harare City Council for the rehabilitation of the city’s roads, which were recently declared a state of disaster.

Harare is expecting at least $15 million for its 2017 allocation considering the state of the city’s roads.

According to the recent minutes of the Environmental Management Committee, councillors noted that Zinara had disbursed $1,7 million in 2016 and council was owed road and maintenance grants by Zinara dating back to 2015, which the road authority had promised to pay.

Last year, Zinara announced that it had allocated $1,2 million for road maintenance, but it is still to release the funds.

“The committee further noted that the funds were inadequate for the repair or maintenance of the 7 000km of roads, drains, public lighting, traffic signals and other street furniture,” read the minutes.

The road network had not had any meaningful routine maintenance over the last 15 years and the current heavy rains left the road network in a bad state.

“Council now discussed the matter expressing concern at the poor state of the road network in the city and observed that the state of the city’s roads was as a result of severe underfunding since the takeover of the vehicle licensing function by Zinara.”

Responding to the allocation of $1,2 million last year, Harare Mayor Cllr Bernard Manyenyeni said the allocation spelt doom for Harare roads.

“It is a joke — what does Zinara do for a living? If Harare has got anything to do with road maintenance we may have to introduce our own road fee. Goodbye roads for now,” he said.

“We expect $40 million to $70 million per year and you would notice it working. We can’t be taking money for water treatment to fix roads.”

Government has put Uganda Telecoms (UTL) under receivership in a move state Minister for Investment says is the only chance to save the troubled telecom company.

Evelyn Anite has told a press conference at the Ministry of Finance Headquarters that placing the telco under administration will save it from collapse.

“Putting UTL under an administrator is the best news for subscribers,” Ms Anite said, “I can assure that if you are a UTL subscriber, it will be here tomorrow and the day after, in fact I want to encourage more Ugandans to have UTL as their first line.”

Government took over the full control of UTL on February 25 after the majority shareholder, Libya government-owned UCom unilaterally pulled out of the struggling company.

Ms Anite said that since taking control, government has evaluated and found that the telco’s liability far outweighed its assets but has resisted a push to wind it up.

The telco is believed to owe about Ush128 billion ($34.7million) in debts.

By Hildebrand Shayo

Presently most bank’s quarterly audited financial reports indicates that these banks are experiencing high levels of non-performing loans (NPLs) ranging from four per cent to 50 per cent with averaged increase from 6.4 to 9.5 per cent when figures are placed in perspective.

Issues of NPLs and costs efficiency are related in several ways with general belief that failing banks tend to be located far from the best practice. While there is no suspicion on positive relationship between assets quality and costs efficiency that most of our banks are drawn in.

There are broad consensus on the view that high NPL levels ultimately have a negative impact on bank but as well as lending to the economy resulting to the balance sheet quality, profitability and capital restraints.

While in the contemporary years, studies on bank competence have taken in account asset quality specifically NPLs as a measure of bank’s performance, our bank’s current NPLs need decisive exit strategy from both a macro-prudential and a micro-prudential perspective.

Whereas isn’t about bank’s officers to go out “to collect” from those who have taken banks facility and have failed to meet their repayment commitment.

The omission to take on board business operating environment might lead to an erroneous banks measures as larger proportion of NPLs may signals that banks use fewer resources than usual in their credit evaluation and loan monitoring process.

The global lender is warning about soaring bad debts because although it may be contested, NPLs are hindrances to economic stability and growth of economies. Current measures taken by Central Bank of Tanzania of reducing statutory minimum reserves from 10 to 8 per cent is only a tip of the iceberg as more robust measures are required because the difference created is going to be of less value of the all-inclusive economy is stressed.

To promptly address the NPLs issues and hence cultivate a workable strategy that will address future similar problem, there is a need to place NPL’s in the business sector and those in the household sector.

In this way the ratio of NPLs to the total loans disbursed by the sector could help to designs appropriate strategy. Proposed approach is due to the fact that from the point of view of management accounting, bank asset quality and operating performance are certainly related.

Implication is that if a bank’s asset quality is insufficient i.e. amount becomes the amount to be collected, the bank will have no choice but to increase its bad debt losses as well as spend more resources on the collection of NPLs.

Naive of bank’s risks, knowledge gained from analysing published audited financial reports indicates that when banks list the loan amount for collection, banks will sustain extra operating costs from what can be termed as non-value-added activities to handle and supervise the collection process.

Non-value added undertakings may involve many hours of bank’s offices of constantly pursuing the debtors financial status, hours of being vigilant of the security value, dialogue and meetings on amortization plans, paying overheads for contract re-negotiation, calculating the costs to withhold, guarantee tracking and dispose of collateral at the time the loans become completely non-payable among other external variables outside bank’s control such as delays in court system, court injunctions and client’s character.

Furthermore, non-value added costs that goes unrecognised is winning the trust from possible lenders and public, preserving the banks from being rated poor as a consequences of external affairs, declining deposits due to a loss in credibility and extra banks resources to monitor loan quality.

Contained by this context, ignorance of the quality of the bank’s balance sheet may grab the attention of the business partners within and outside that may in turn deteriorates banks efficiency a situation captured by global lender as they warns about soaring bad debts.

Given banking industry business environment predominant in Tanzania today, bank loans will continue to be non-performing since glitches with perceived liquidity shortage purported to be caused by government withdraw of its deposits from commercial banks, commodity prices declines etc and the borrower’s financial health, problems with the design or implementation of lender protection features, or both.

In establishing how to deal with a problem loan, banks have tighten their credit terms as bad loans top 1.98tri/- in the stock of credit in the economy reaching 20.89tri/-. Notwithstanding the fact that lenders in the Tanzania financial landscape are stiffen terms of lending as one of the measures to deal with the escalation of NPLs, that has severely reduced the profits margins of many banks it is imperative from now on to distinguish between a borrower’s ability to pay and willingness to pay as opposed to rely on assets as collateral. Making this distinction is not at all times easy and requires effort.

Cautionary about soar-that turn into bad debt or dead loans will remains to be a problem for Tanzania banking industry and to some extent, this will be unavoidable. With industry’s amateurs diverse drivers for NPLs as a pretext, 59 Tanzanian banks in total, based on the first quota published audited financial reports give the impression that bank’s risk controls for loans are unsuccessful because the banks own a disproportionate levels of bad loans.

There is no one size fits all approach. Different banks pursue different strategies in relation to different types of loans. Strategic issues shaping approach in dealing with NPLs will include whether the loan can be rationalized, the quality of the principal collateral, proposed recovery levels, size of exposure, location of collateral etc.

One important thing is for banks, investors and borrowers to work together and be creative in finding solutions to the problems they collectively face to curb escalating NPLs.

ANALYSIS

Uganda is under attack. It is under attack from the Fall Armyworm in what experts call a “biological invasion”. Unfortunately, it appears, the government was caught unprepared. It has reacted with a mixture of indecision, panic, bluff, and deployment of ineffective intervention. As a result, the farmers – who are at the frontlines to battle the new enemy – are poorly equipped, frustrated, and desperate.

Umaru Ddumba, who has 107-acre farm in in Makukuba Village, Nabbaale Sub County, in Mukono District near Kampala, is a typical farmer in this category.

When he set out to plant his 12-acre maize plantation, he was looking at striking a windfall of over Shs30 million from his crop. He expected to harvest 20 bags of 100kgs each from each acre, which would give him 240 bags. And if he sold each at 150,000, he would get Shs36 million. But today, when you get to his farm, what you see are shriveled plants, with leaves mostly covered in numerous holes of varying sizing as if they were shredded by grenade shrapnel and are still on fire.

The Fall Armyworm, a never before seen pest in Uganda, caught Ddumba by surprise. He had prepared for the usual maize stalk borer(ndiwulira) by setting aside Shs1 million for pesticides and spraying. Instead, by mid- April he had spent Shs7 million on fighting the army of worms – with minimal success, on a field he planted in March. He was looking to harvest in June but is unsure now.

“I have little hope of getting any sizeable harvest,” he says.

But he cannot give up. He continues to spray because he fears the worm may attack his other crops on the farm since he is a mixed farmer who also grows bananas, coffee, and pineapples. He also keeps cattle.

Failure of this maize crop means Ddumba is making losses over two seasons in a row. Last season, he planted seven acres of maize and was expecting to get 140 bags but instead got only 105 as drought ravaged the country.

Ddumba’s losses, however, could have an even bigger implication for the economy. Even before the fall armyworm outbreak, food prices had remained stubbornly high because of the last poor harvest. Failure of this season will mean higher prices and possible stock-outs and famine.

Yet Ddumba is not alone. The armyworm has ravaged over 60 districts out of the 111 in the country. Many of those not attacked are not maize growing districts.

Desperate fight

The farmers, frustrated that they have been left to fight the new invaders on their own, without help from the government, have resorted to desperate measures to try save their crop.

Brig. Kasirye Ggwanga, the maverick soldier who was once the political head of neighbouring Mubende district has a 200-acre farm in Nakisunga village in Mukono District which was still safe in April. As always, he has developed a theory about why other farms are under attack.

“When you do research you find that this worm has mostly hit areas where trees have been cut down because the moths fly easily in empty space unlike in our areas which are still forested and the moths are trapped by the trees,” he says.

But Mukono District Agricultural Officer, Steven Mukasa Mabira, reports that the some farmers whose farms are under armyworm siege are resorting to desperate measures. Some are spraying paraffin on the plants.

Others like Moses Nyanzi, who has an acre of maize in Bbuto village Bweyogerere, are using a mixture of Dudu Cyper (which they have been using for the maize stork borer) and paraffin. While the concoction kills the larvae, it also scorches the young maize.

But Ddumba appears to be the most determined. He says when he first realised his maize was under attack from the worm in early March, he immediately dashed to shops in Kampala city’s downtown area called Container Village which is a haven of agro-vet supplies. He was sold an insecticide concentrate called Stryker which is traded by the American company; Control Solutions Inc., and is known to kill a wide array of insects. It is also highly toxic to open water sources, and kills bees.

Ddumba was told to use 20mls of Stryker in 15 litres of water. But it did not kill the worms. Ddumba was possibly not surprised because Uganda does not have an approved directory of approved pesticides and retail outlets, meaning farmers are used at hitting and missing with fake drugs.

So desperate Ddumba hatched a new plan involving a cocktail of Stryker and two acaricides he was familiar with; Dudufenol (also marketed as Dudu Cyper) and Dudu killer (a chemical designed to kill termites and manufactured in neighbouring Kenya). They killed a few worms but not all.

Ddumba was excited when the government finally announced on April 10 that it was joining the fight against the armyworm and the Minister of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Fisheries (MAAIF) Vincent Ssempijja, announced at a press conference at the Media Centre in Kampala that Shs4.5 billion had been set aside for the task.

The resolve of government appeared to be confirmed as Ssempija was flanked by Lt. Gen. Charles Angina, the Deputy Coordinator of Operation Wealth Creation (OWC); a major government project to alleviate household poverty through agriculture.

When Ssempijja announced three recommended companies to sell drugs; namely Bukoola Chemical Industries, Nsanja Agrochemicals Ltd, and Uganda Crop Care Ltd, he was not adding anything new to the fight. These firms were the ones selling the Stryker, Engeo, and Rocket pesticides the farmers were already gambling with.

Ssempijja also said the Agriculture ministry was procuring emergency pesticides, pheromone traps for pest surveillance and motorised spray pumps, and recruiting 3,000 extension workers.

Ddumba’s shock came, however, when Ssempijja unveiled only 2,460 litres of pesticides to be used by OWC officers for all affected districts. Each district was getting between 100 and 30 litres depending on the number of reported cases.

If, as Ddumba says, each litre sprays about 1.5 acres, the government’s effort was equivalent to using a bucket to put out a farm fire.

Later, the Executive Secretary of the Uganda National Farmers Federation (UNFF), Augustine Mwendya, said the government had procured plans another 60,000 litres of pesticide for distribution free of charge to farmers in the affected regions of the country. UNFF is a member of the taskforce which was set up by MAAIF to fight the worm.

But when Ssempijja was asked about the 60,000 litres of pesticide and when they will be distributed to farmers, he sounded cagey and insisted instead that farmers should buy pesticides.

Ddumba says a litre of Stryker goes for Shs32,000 at retail price and the wholesale price is Shs28,000. Since one litre sprays one and a half acres of maize garden, Ddumba who has 12 acres needs eight litres for each spray run. That adds up to Shs224,000 without the labour costs.

But when Minister Ssempijja was launching the official pesticides, he said it advisable to spray twice a day so as to kill the worm and eggs. At that rate Ddumba would be spending close to Shs500,000 for each spray run. Very few farmers can afford that. That means the army worn will continue feasting on their maize at leisure. And the armyworm is a mean eater.

Stealth eater

The armyworm arrives in the night in the belly of multitudes of gray and brown moths that recently popped up in maize gardens across the country. With nobody paying attention, the moths laid up to 1500 eggs per female in clusters under the maize leaves and moved on. Four days later the eggs, still unwatched, hatched tiny greenish caterpillars with black heads which immediately started feeding on the thin layer of the underside of the leaf to avoid the sun and detection. But by week two the caterpillars had grown to about half a man’s middle finger in length, with a thick whitish brown body and a reddish head bearing an inverted ‘Y’ mark. Unsatisfied with the thin layers of the underbelly of the leaf, the caterpillar soon pierced thousands of holes in the maize leaves, ears, and cobs. Since they fed mainly in the morning and evening when it was cool and the farmers were away, it was weeks before they were detected.

Older larvae cause extensive defoliation often leaving only the stalks of the maize plants. On some fields, the larvae also burrowed into the growing point ‘bud’ of the maize and destroyed it. The larvae feed on basically every part of the maize except the roots. The larvae eat the leaves, concentrating on the funnel-like areas formed by leaves. They also dig into the ears and even maize cobs. This means the maize is at risk at all stages. This goes on for between two weeks and one month when the caterpillars morph into the pupa stage in readiness to become adult moths and restart the cycle.

Finally the MAAIF did a demonstration on fighting the army worn on Ddumba’s farm. But the worms remain. Ddumba says they might have become resistant to the drugs. He says he has settled to using only Stryker.

“But I am also trying out several pesticide combinations,” he says.

A Ugandan agricultural scientist, Dr. John W. Bahana, who runs an agricultural consultancy, says the government should not have been caught unawares if it was running an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system.

Bahana, wrote in a newspaper article, that he has 30 years of fighting armyworms under his belt. He is an expert in this area because he first worked at Uganda’s top agriculture research body, the Kawanda Research Station near Kampala and returned from doing similar work in Zambia. He explains that under IPM, traps fitted with chemicals that mimic sex emitting characteristics of insects are routinely deployed to capture insects from a distance as far as 20kms away.

“High numbers of male moths in the trap; say above 50 each night, will signal an outbreak,” he says.

He says the scientists would then collaborate with meteorologists to determine the cause of the high number of moths as they may have been caused by wind convergences. In any case, he says, outbreaks will be registered in an area seven days after arrival of the moths.

“The rest is no technical stuff,” he says and outlines some procedures; the farmers are alerted by local officials to search for the small worms, pesticides are supplied to as near the outbreak as possible, and farmers are trained on how to spray against the marauding insects.

None of that happened this time. The question now is whether the government will be better prepared for such an invasion next time. Scientists have been warning of this and since, as Bahana says, the fall armyworm is a cousin of the African armyworm, it could become endemic to the region.

Governments warned

In April 2016, several scientists working under several big-name global research organisations published a paper entitled ‘Global threat to agriculture from invasive species. The paper, which was edited by Harold A. Mooney and published in the journal, Proceedings of the National academy of sciences, surveyed 1300 pests to assess their potential to move across the globe and invade new territories. They warned that invasive species, such as the armyworm, threaten global agriculture.

“Overall, the biggest agricultural producers (China and the United States) could experience the greatest absolute cost from further species invasions,” the scientists wrote, “However, developing countries, in particular, Sub-Saharan African countries, appear most vulnerable in relative terms”.

In the survey, Uganda was ranked to be at very low risk compared to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Mozambique. But that was partly because the research based their extrapolations on global trade linkages of which Uganda has few. But Uganda should have been better prepared because the invasion of the armyworm is the second major biological attack on the country in about 20 years. The other was the water hyacinth which devastated Lake Victoria between 1992 and 1998.

Lack of vigilance means the exact time the army worn reached Uganda remains mysterious. Though some reports talk of September and October 2016, MAAIF in its statement says the worms were first reported in May 2016 with farmers in Kayunga, Kesese, and Bukedea reporting “caterpillars” that were destroying their maize. However, other reports say the worms were active in Uganda as early as March 2016. That would mean it took the government a whole year to confirm the outbreak. It would also be an indictment on the breakdown of the agricultural extension service. But Minister Ssempijja is defensive.

“This is a new pest and we had to do tests in laboratories here and abroad to confirm what it was before we could announce the outbreak,” he says.

What is known now is that the Fall Armyworm is a native of the western hemisphere; from the United States to Argentina. In the U.S. it is predominant in the south of the Florida and Texas states. But the fall armyworm, scientifically called Spodoptera frugiperda, is a strong flier and the moth can cover up to 2000Kms annually. That is how it gets about. It remains a mystery, however, how the worm crossed the Atlantic into Africa. A statement by MAAIF on March 27 said it could have been imported in agricultural produce.

In Africa, it was first reported in Nigeria in January 2016. Outbreaks have since been confirmed in Togo, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

It gets the “army” in its name because of the marching behavior of its larvae or caterpillar stage which destroy whatever vegetation is in their wake completely before moving on to the next area. The ‘fall’ has to do with the season they thrive in best in their native home. The larvae in fact love cool weather and can last in that state for 30 days when it’s cooler and only 10 days in warmer weather. That rhymes with the life cycle of the worm, which is between 30 and 90 days.

More than 27,000 farmers in the Brong-Ahafo Region have registered to benefit from the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ campaign, Mr Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, said last week.

Speaking at the inauguration of the District Technical Committees for the campaign in Sunyani, the regional minister said 100,000 interested farmers were expected to benefit in the region.

The committees are made up of representatives from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, District Co-coordinating directors, planning officers and farmers.

Mr Asomah-Cheremeh reaffirmed government’s commitment to provide storage facilities in every district to address the problem of post-harvest losses.

He said under the campaign, farmers would be supported in the effort to increase production, and advised the unemployed to consider the benefits in farming.

The regional minister said the government has made available ready markets both local and international for beneficiary farmers.

Mr Asomah-Cheremeh reminded the members of the committee of the unique role they play and urged the general public to support them.

Mr Godwin Dzansi, the Dormaa Central Municipal Coordinating Director, on behalf of the committees, thanked the regional minister for the confidence reposed in them, and assured him that they would work to ensure the success of the campaign. GNA