The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere has called on Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) to decentralise its activities to the districts in order to get closer to the people with the fund.

He said, the region has developed an agricultural development plan with the districts specialising in production and called on the fund to provide the needed support to individuals and groups engaged under the programme to enable them create employment.

Mr Antwi-Boasiako was speaking when the Chief Executive Officer of EDAIF, Dr Baafour Osei and some management staff of the fund called on him to introduce the Zonal Manager of the fund for the Volta and Eastern Regions to him in Koforidua.

He explained that, the public sector is choked and so when government talks about creation of employment, the target is to support the private sector to expand and create more avenues for jobs.

Mr Antwi-Boasiako said, many of the youth in Region are engaged in oil palm, poultry, commercial mango and vegetable production, which calls for support.

Dr Osei said, it is the determination of the EDAIF Board to decentralise but due to resource challenge, the fund had created zonal offices in Tamale, Kumasi, Takoradi and Ho apart from the head office in Accra.

He said the focus of the fund is to support enterprises and companies that are producing agricultural products for export or processing into secondary products.

Dr Osei said, last year, the fund supported farmers and farmer groups to plant 7,000 acres of mango farms and this year, EDAIF would be supporting farmers to plant 3,000 acres of mango plantations.

He said the zonal offices of the fund have been charged to come out with regional specific programmes for implementation.