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He was arrested together with some Sunyani Municipal Assembly Staff who are believed to have masterminded the smuggling of the government fertilizers into neighbouring Burkina Faso with the connivance of some Chinese nationals, mynewsgh reports. They are currently being interrogated by the CID.
According to Joy News that first reported the fertilizer story, the missing fertilizers are about 50,000 metric tonnes and worth $12 million.
A report by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Agriculture, (Food and Cocoa Affairs) on the financial estimates for 2019 said they may have been smuggled to Burkina Faso and Togo.
According to the report, the Ministry for Food and Agriculture has also been allocated insufficient funds in the 2019 budget for the purchase of fertiliser.
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“Out of a total budget of GHȼ140, 930, 250.00 earmarked for the purchase of fertilizer for the year 2019, only GHȼ47, 726,216.80 has been provided for in the budget,” sections of the report reads.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has in a statement clarified that the amount of $12 million dollars said to be losses incurred as a result of smuggling of fertilizers under the Planting for food and jobs programme.
“What the Minister said during the budget hearing was that over the years the country had not been able to quantify in monetary terms the actual losses being incurred as a result of fertilizers being smuggled outside Ghana to neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso and Togo.
“The Minister then went ahead to explain that under the current administration, efforts had been made to quantify the cost which amounted to about $12m dollars, which translates into about 50,000 metric tonnes,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry also revealed that about 50 trucks of fertilizers, which were being smuggled to Burkina Faso were seized in the Upper West Region and that “efforts are being made to nip the vicious activities of these fertilizer-smuggling cartels in the bud.”