Senior Partner at AB and David, Dr. David Ofosu-Dorte has blamed the influence of market queens as one of the reasons for high food prices on the market.
According to Dr. Ofosu-Dorte, the control market queens wield, enables them to decide activities in the value chain including the carting of these food items from farmlands to districts and big cities.
“There’s something called market queens, they decide what you eat. They control who plants tomatoes, who brings the planting to the market and all that”, he said.
The renowned lawyer emphasised that “it’s possible for a market queen, for example, to decide that a particular product will not be sent to a particular district.” Highlighting the influence of these market queens.
While government continues to grapple with storage facilities to curb post-harvest losses, Dr. Ofosu Dorte believes dealing with the price-setting cartels such the market leaders could be a solution.
He called on relevant agencies to pay close attention to the activities of these queens, whom according to him are politically affiliated, making their operations sophisticated and difficult to eliminate.
“A lot of food actually get rotten in the villages, meanwhile we suffer a huge amount of post-harvest losses, because the food is not being transported to where it is supposed to be consumed, this is because some queens are controlling whether it should be transported or not.”
“Because they fund these things, they have a complete control and we need to address that as a nation. These are the fundamental issues, and we need to address and deregulate it”, he demanded.
He also called out transport associations like the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) and others for conniving with these ‘market powers’ to monopolize the distribution chain, creating a sophisticated chain.
Dr. Ofosu-Dorte cited an example from the previous government, where the Ministry of Agriculture successfully transported plantains at a lower cost, highlighting the impact of cartel control.
“How come their plantain was cheaper than others? It’s because they were transporting it through vehicles under their control,” he explained.
“This shows that the issue isn’t with the farmers or the produce, but with the transportation system, which is being controlled by a few individuals.”
According to the World Food Programme, Ghana loses about $1.9 billion of its crop production to post-harvest losses annually.
Although these losses are attributed to factors such as lack of processing and storage facilities as well as poor road network, it appears market queens and the transport operators may be one of the areas which needs attention.
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