The Commercial and SME Director of Fidelity Bank, Alex Agyei Amponsah, has said the bank is strategically focusing on agriculture and exports to generate enough export earnings to meet the needs of the country.
He said as a local bank, measures have been put in place to support the food industry to generate the needed value for export.
Mr. Amponsah bemoaned the situation where the country spends on importing goods instead of using the resources to generate value to feed the people and create value to bring in the needed foreign savings.
“If you look at what we are going through today as a country, we believe that it’s because we are not generating enough export proceeds to feed the need that we have”, he explained.
Mr Amponsah added that “so as a bank, we have to take a strategic decision that agriculture and export is one of the key areas that we are going to focus on and we are focusing on.”
He further explained that the bank is supporting those in the food value chain production, tapping into the mango, poultry, and maize industries, among others, to resolve some of the difficulties, including funding challenges facing the value chain providers.
He spoke at the mango value chain stakeholder training in Sunyani in the Bono Region, organized by Fidelity Bank in partnership with the eco-business fund.
The training was aimed at addressing bottlenecks in mango production and exports such as pest and disease management, input sourcing, climate change and its effects, processing and certification for export, and access to finance.
It will also help improve the about 10 metric tons of mango per hectare and add value to the yields.
About 70 participants drawn from across Ghana, including exporters, processors, producers and aggregators, input dealers, and consultants, took part in the training.
The training also had representations from the Ghana Standards Board, Ghana Export Promotion Authority, Plant Protection, and Regulatory Services, Ghana Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL), and the Tree Crop Development Authority.
The Director, Commercial and SME at Fidelity Bank, Alex Agyei Amponsah, emphasized the need to provide support and solutions for the mango producers with the assemble of all the people who matter to address their issues such as why they are unable to export.
Chairman of the National Mango Association, Anthony Botchway, who described the mango sector as lucrative, believes with the right support, the sector would meet its expectations.
“Problems must be solved with inputs and people with knowledge, and all these will cost money. So with Fidelity Bank and Eco-Business Fund coming in, we believe that they will make the necessary financing available to solve the problems. “
Strategic adviser to finance in motion, Eco-Business Fund, Caleb Tamfu, said the expectation is to listen and understand the key points and how investment can be done in a financially sustainable way.
He said that “where we find ourselves now with the challenges in the country, it calls for action and a need to look for creative solutions to be sustainable.”
