Global economic growth is greatly influenced by the immense benefits agriculture adds to the growth of the economy. However, the robustness of the sector is strongly backed by the availability of adequate financial support.
Although many people are engaging in farming, the agricultural sector in Ghana and Africa at large is experiencing a lot of challenges and constraints in terms of financial assistance and the decline of investors’ interest to invest in the sector. Sometimes financial institutions are reluctant to accept the risks present in the agricultural sector, such as droughts, floods, pests, and diseases, or the transaction costs of covering large geographical distances and thus result in backing out in providing support to farmers and even large-scale processors.
Many farmers have vast arable farmlands but are not able to fully gain the benefits from their hard labour. It can however be said that financial constraints contribute to farmers engaging in subsistence farming and some experiencing post-harvest losses due to lack of finances to indulge in value-addition.
TIAST Group has identified this problem and has implemented a way to bridge the gap. TIAST provides Financial Support to farmers and entrepreneurs who want to enter agro-processing, especially for the cassava industry to boost the entire value chain.
Currently, TIAST provides 70% of the total cost of the cassava processing factory. The client is responsible to provide 30% of the total cost as equity, flexible repayment plans ranging from 3 to 6 year.