Dr. Nduom urged the workers to take their work seriously and announced that farmers will be readily paid for their produce with life insurance packages.
He encouraged other people to invest in the sector.
Managing Director at Ghana Growth Fund Company (GGFC,) the investing arm of GN, Kwame Asomaning, in a welcome address explained that GN now owns a major stake in the factory and therefore has plans of expanding to other parts of the sub-region.
He indicated that the factory will provide employment and support for local farmers in the Volta and Northern regions.
Mr. Asomaning urged Ghanaians to buy the Edwumawura Rice since after harvest will be ready on the market in a fortnight time for consumption rather than the sometimes 10-year-old imported rice.
“Ghana has 580,000 acres of land that can produce 1.7 million tonnes of rice to feed the entire country so why import? We borrowed $940 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) yet send $1.2 billion outside for rice importation. This is not sound economics,” he lamented.
Owner of Afariwa Farms and former Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) president, Nana Owusu Afari, in an address said that the day marks the beginning of wealth creation for rice farmers in the area adding that Ghana has all the resources to create wealth hence if the people are self-sufficient, there will be little or no need for state interventions.
The entrepreneur and chief disclosed that the new investors will also build the capacity of the rice farmers.
A representative of the farmers, Seth Kwame Darko, pledged that they will feed the Mill with quality rice following trainings given them by the Ministry of Agriculture and some foreign development partners.
He highlighted undeveloped lands and lack of machinery as some of the challenges they face.
Dr. Nduom will break ground for the construction of another mill at Assin Bereku in the Central region on Thursday, November 3, 2016.
Source: Ghana/todaygh.com/Rochard K. A. Agyapong