As Ghana celebrates the contribution of agriculture to the country, Pineapple Exporters in Ghana are calling on government to support interventions initiated by private operators to sustain the industry. The exporters are also requesting transporters to review the freight charges, which they say are too exorbitant.

Apart from the numerous problems confronting the pineapple industry locally, the industry is also grappling with several problems on the European market.

Pineapple is gradually becoming one of the most important agricultural export crops in the country – but the industry is beginning to come up against se difficulties that threaten to hamper its viability.

The volume of pineapple exports grew rapidly from 2000 tones in 1989 to about 50,000 tones in 2002. The pineapple industry accounted for 46 per cent of the total horticultural export revenue of 33.6 million in the same year.

Notwithstanding the steady growth in export volumes over the years, the pineapple industry in Ghana has been confronted with some challenges. Among these problems is the shift of the European market demand from the smooth cayenne produced by Ghana to the MD 2 pineapple variety produced mainly in South Africa.

As a result of this trend, Ghana’s share of the European market has stagnated around 9 per cent for the past few years. This development and other factors have since October this year, culminated in the drastic reduction in the market prices for the commodity, which has adversely affected the cost of production.

The Managing Director of Sea-Freight Pineapple Exporters of Ghana, Stephen Mintah, told Joy Business Report that the present situation has led to a review of the farm gate price of pineapple produced in the country.

“For between six and eight weeks now, the market for Ghanaian pineapples has gone down considerably in Europe. It has fallen by almost 40 per cent because of better and cheap variety of pineapples from South America.”

But Mr. Mintah believes all is not lost. He enumerated a number steps that should be taken to revive the industry especially if government comes to their aid.

“We are working at this and have put in place plans for research and development that would improve how we grow the crop here. But it would help greatly if government could help us match the South Americans by providing us with the variety of pineapple that has made their products so successful in the European market”, he said.

Samuel Yirenkyi’s report