Photo: Dr. Nelson Simbiken. Credit: The National
For the duration of 2023, the agriculture sector's planned operations would require a budgetary expenditure of K1 billion.
Dr. Nelson Simbiken, acting secretary for the Department of Agriculture and Livestock, stated that the government must provide between K500 million and K1 billion to the sector if K1 billion is not possible.
Nine commodity sectors, including the NAQIA, NARI, cocoa, coffee, coconut, spice, rubber, fresh produce, and oil palm industries, are included in the budget, according to him.
“In 2023, that is the budget we want and we are expecting the government to give us between K500 million and K1 billion so that we are able to support our citizens through agriculture,” he said.
According to Dr. Simbiken, the Department of Agriculture would require a total budget of K300 million to enable the department get started in the correct way by creating a new corporate or business strategy.
“We will be launching the corporate plan at the end of this month or early next month.
“We are going to restructure, reorganise and get our staff to work in the regions and in the districts getting closer to the farmers,” he said.
“We have a new corporate plan coming up and we will ensure that by 2023 we will implement the corporate plan so that we address key policy agendas for the government, that is commercialisation, downstream processing, encouraging growth in the SME sector, financial inclusion of all our citizens, going into the rural areas and engaging through agriculture business across the regions.
“We want to create the agriculture business incubation across the regions for our rural people to participate.”
Reference: Post-Courier (25 October 2022). “Agri Sector Needs K1b In 2023 Budget”.
