Prof. Eric Osei-Assibey, Economist at the Development Bank Ghana (DBG), has underscored the urgent need to derisk Ghana’s agriculture sector to improve access to affordable credit for agribusinesses.
Speaking at the 2025 Citi Business Forum on Thursday, June 19, under the theme “Harnessing Agribusiness Potential for Economic Growth: Expanding Agricultural Frontiers and Maximising Productivity in Ghana,” Prof. Osei-Assibey pointed to the persistently high risk levels in the sector as a major deterrent for banks and financial institutions.
“Agriculture is still very risky. If you look at the data, the sectoral distribution of NPLs, in 2023, agriculture contributed about 52% to NPLs in Ghana. It has come down in 2024 to about 38, but it is still risky,” he noted.
He explained that due to this elevated risk, banks often apply high-risk premiums when pricing loans to agribusinesses, which results in higher interest rates for farmers and players in the value chain.
“Banks will take the risk premium to price. But how do we derisk the system? For me, that is the most important thing,” he added.
Prof. Osei-Assibey stressed that improving access to credit for the agriculture sector requires a deliberate effort to mitigate risks across the entire value chain from production to distribution.
“If we want to scale up credit to the sector, we have to begin to talk about derisking the sector. Because if the risk is low, pricing will be low to a large extent. But if the risk is high, they will price that in, and so the interest rate will go high,” he explained.
