As part of the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) program, the Statistics Research and Information Directorate (SRID) and the Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (PPMED) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), in partnership with IFPRI’s Ghana Strategy Support Program (GSSP), recently published a series of market briefs in which seasonal price patterns and longer term price trends in key agricultural commodity markets are analyzed. The analysis focuses specifically on subperiods before and after the launch of the PFJ program in 2017. The results from the maize, tomato and chili analyses all suggest that wholesale prices have dropped below their long-term, anticipated trend and price volatility has been lower since the introduction of PFJ in 2017. (The same is not true for rice, for which Ghana remains heavily dependent on imports and hence domestic prices follow international ones.)
Retail prices, on the other hand, continued to follow the historical trend and seasonal price patterns after the introduction of PDJ, and in many instances, the markup from wholesale to retail prices has increased. While the studies are not exhaustive, and further in-depth analysis along the various complex supply chains is needed, these results may indicate that the benefits of providing subsidized inputs to farmers are not passed on to consumers.
Two additional market briefs, for onion and soy bean, are currently under development. The market briefs are an output from a series of capacity building events led by GSSP (see here) aimed at enhancing market analysis and writing skills of MoFA staff. IFPRI and MoFA receive funding from AGRA under the Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation In Africa (PIATA) to implement these and other PFJ M&E related activities.
Access market briefs here