A Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, says rice importers have welcomed the government’s intention to ban rice importation by 2022. When we communicated plans to ban the rice importation by 2022, the importers were happy. Their main challenge however is whether our current production capacity can meet demand to avoid going back. After inspecting the facilities of GADCO, Mr Nyarko said the intention of the government to ban rice importation was to support local rice farmers to gain access to a market for their produce. It would become a mirage if efforts were not made to scale up the production capacity of rice farmers in the country to meet the high demand for the commodity. The country consumed about 940,000 tonnes of rice every month as against the country’s production capacity of about 400,000 tonnes. The country had witnessed an increase in the production of paddy rice over the past two years. In 2018, we recorded a total rice production level of about 769,400 tonnes. We are inching this year to about 900,000 tonnes and we have given ourselves up to about 2022 to meet the average per capita consumption rate of rice in the country to about 1,135 tonnes.