Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has revealed that government is planning to “launch a major pension scheme for cocoa farmers”.

He disclosed this in the keynote address at an International Conference on the Political Economy of Economic Transformation at the Alisa Hotel in Accra on Tuesday, September 19 as he disclosed three new programmes targeted by government.

He said government with introduce the Marshall Plan for Agric. This “will complement our programme of Planting for Food and Jobs, it is just going to enhance it. Marshall Plan for Agric will ramp up the investments under the Planting for Food and Jobs programme”.

Under the Marshall Plan for Agric, government plans to abolish duties on agricultural produce processing equipment and machinery, support the development of agri-business startups, de-risk and finance agricultural farming, open food baskets in areas such as the Northern part of Ghana and the Afraim Plains through road construction and irrigation projects, give specific technical assistance and tax incentives to support agro processing and improve marketing.

In addition, government is projecting increase agricultural mechanization across farming areas to boost productivity. Secondly, Dr Bawumia underscored the implementation of the Digital Address system which will be launched in October, 2017.

“This is probably what I will say is the most advanced addressing system in the world,” he added.

The third programme he outlined is interoperability for telecommunication networks to enable easy transaction of mobile money across different networks.