The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has estimated that $2.8 billion coconut revenue for Ghana by 2021 is possible if propositions are well advanced to boost production, processing and exportation of the crop.
As part of government’s effort to promote other cash crops in its Planting for Export and Rural Development programme, GEPA and African Coconut Group are organising the first ever International Coconut Festival to bring to bare, some of the hidden benefits of coconut and how Ghana could earn foreign exchange from it.
Speaking to Adom News at an unveiling ceremony for Ambassadors for the campaign in Accra, Director of Public Relations of GEPA, Ruth Maafo said the festival, scheduled to take place between the 24th and 26th of September this year will bring together stakeholders in the coconut industry across the globe to connect to Ghanaian farmers to make them globally competitive and have value for their produce.
“The festival gives us a platform to interact more to network along the value chain and once we know more about what you can derive from coconut, people are going to develop other means of revenue streams that if they were doing it on a small-scale, they wouldn’t have gotten,” she explained.
Meanwhile, a Director of the African Coconut Group, Kwaku Boateng, speaking to Adom News at the same event enumerated some of the benefits of coconut that are oblivious to the layman.
Mr Boateng averred how “coconut water was sold for 312 million dollars in the United States in 2012 because of the nutritional benefits we derive from the water.”
“If you go to Philippines and the statistics are there, the coconut industry has employed about 35 million people in the whole value chain and I always ask myself, what is the population of Ghana?” he quizzed.
Source: Ghana|Adom FM| Felix Anim-Appau| kwadwoasiedu2012@gmail.com
