Madam Emelia Arthur, the Minister-designate for the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MoFAD), says it is important for Ghana to enhance aquaculture to supplement the protein needs of Ghanaians.
Madam Arthur explained that it was extremely important to enhance aquaculture because fisheries provided 60 percent of the protein needs of Ghanaians; however, Ghana’s marine and inland fish resources were depleting, therefore the need to rely on aquaculture to make up the shortfall.
She said this during her vetting by the Appointment Committee of Parliament on Wednesday.
“Currently we have only six large-scale farms, 14 medium-scale farms, and 2300 small-scale aquaculture farmers, so one of the things we intend to do is to support, attract, direct, and facilitate funding for operators of aquaculture farms,” she said.
The Minister-designate also acknowledged that one of the expensive things that affected aquaculture was the feed, as the inputs into the feed were imported, making the feed expensive.
She therefore gave the assurance that MoFAD would collaborate with the Ministry of Agriculture to look at how to produce, especially maize and soya beans, for the aquaculture sub-sector of fisheries.
“We also want to invest in research, especially around diseases as far as aquaculture is involved,” she added.
She gave the assurance that these were some of the things the government wanted to do for jobs in aquaculture and prospective for the young people.
By Laudia Sawer