Soya bean processors lament over losing industry to Indians
Local producers and processors of soya beans have attributed the collapse of the local industry to the lack of attention by government leading to a total export of raw soya beans produced in the country.
They also indicated that the collapse of the industry can partly be blamed on the high cost of poultry feed in the country, since soya bean play an important role in poultry feed production.
Data from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) show that soya beans are not only important in poultry feed production but can also be processed to produce vegetable oil, tofu, meat-substitutes like soya-mince and chunks, milk, ice-cream and a host of other healthy, vitamin-E and protein-rich foods – creating thousands of jobs for Ghanaians while affording them access to relatively cheap nutrition.
The CEO of soya processing company Taipana Limited and Convener of the Rice Millers Association of Ghana, Yaw Adu Poku, speaking in an interview noted that, local processors have lost the market to Indian investors who buy all the raw beans and add value to them before re-importing them to Ghana.
“All of us who went into soya processing are on our knees,” Mr. Adu Poku said – recounting that a solar plant he invested in over a decade ago that could produce 50 tonnes of vegetable oil is no more because government only concentrated on producing the beans without proper policies for off-takers.
“Government policy was only to create jobs for the farmers. So, the farmers produced and there was no buyer. We stepped in to buy, but there was no deliberate policy to support the processors and so the Indians took advantage of the loopholes.”
Mr. Adu Poku added that their concerns have been carried out to the government s many times and even requested that it made part of 1D1F but to n avail.
“With soya bean processing, you can kill 20 birds with one stone. Exporting the raw beans is not in our interest. Processing it right here will support our poultry industry, and Ghana will not have to import eggs from Burkina Faso.”
Mr. Adu Poku explained that some Ghanaian processors faced a challenge with extracting 90 percent of oil from the soya beans when producing the poultry feed in the initial stages.
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He maintained that, government should come in to support such processors to ease their challenges by buying them new equipment to upgrade their operations, even though this was a challenge to the bean processors, but since there is no policy to support them the indians saw it as an opportunity to create a market where the reaw beans are exported without processing.
He stated that the move killed local processors as poultry feed and vegetable oil from Indian flooded the market, forcing local processors to shut down their companies.
Mr. Adu Poku narrated that he had to lay-off tens of his workers as production capacity began to decline. “I do not have any grudge with the Indian investors. I am rather speaking to our government that we are losing millions of dollars from importing vegetable oil and expensive poultry feed.”
Mr. Adu Poku stated that with the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) in existence and operating, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. He appealed for the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to include revamping soya bean processing plants in the One District, One Factory policy.
He is optimistic such a move would enable processors to access cheaper funds to make their production competitive. “We can do it here in Ghana. Why should we produce raw soya beans for export, then we go and import it back with added value at a high cost? Look at the amount of foreign exchange used to import oil into the country,” he noted.
