The Sugarcane Farmers Association of Ghana (SUFAG) have expressed frustration in a press conference held in Kissi in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Municipality in the Central Region, over silence of the 2026 budget statement presented to parliament last week on the revival of the Komenda Sugar Factory.

According to the Association, its frustration was actualized over the incompetent nature of the Interim Management Committee (IMC), inaugurated on August 4, 2025, assigned with the mandate to submit a report outlining steps to operationalize the Komenda Sugar Factory.

A task SUFAG admonishes the Committee has failed to live up to till date, thus its failure to present a report to the Finance Minister to have the Komenda Sugar Factory featured in the budget statement delivered on Thursday, November 13, 2025.

The Sugarcane Framers Association of Ghana cited assurances from President John Dramani Mahama and Vice President Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang that the factory's revival is a priority. Yet actions by the IMC turns to dwindle their optimism for the operationalization of the sugar factory day-in and out.

The Association, however, demands the immediate revocation of the IMC due to its lack of transparency and progress in reviving the factory.

The group led by Okatakyi Nana Kweku Ackon, Director of Communications for the Association, has lamented on the abysmal performance of the IMC with its failure to address the appropriate bodies to have the factory's report captured in the 2026 Budget Statement.

He objected that the Trade Ministry be given the privilege to delve into the affairs of the factory since it has over the years seek to privatized the Komenda Sugar Factory.

The Director of Communication for SUFAG again suggested that the Komenda Sugar Factory must be under the government's Special Initiatives Programme to have it attract the attention it requires to scale up its operationalization.

"Our lives depends on sugarcane plantation, so the Interim Management Committee (IMC) must be blamed for the factory's report not been captured in the budget," he said.

"We want the factory to fully be in operation and not privatized as it is the alleged will of the Ministry of Trade and Industrialization."

Other sugarcane farmers who turnout for the presser also bemoaned that because there's no market for their cultivated sugarcane, they're forced to turn their sugarcane produce for the production of local gin "Apeteshi."

They beseeched that since the dreams of their children must be actualized and not twatted, pleaded on government to address issues surrounding the Komenda Sugar Factory for its immediate revival and urged for the provision of a clear roadmap for restoring the factory and securing market stability for sugarcane growers.

The Komenda Sugar Factory has been non-operational despite major state reinvestment in 2016 aimed at reviving it.

The factory's revival is crucial for the livelihoods of thousands of sugarcane farmers in the Central and Western Regions for a secured market stability.

Sompaonline.com//Eric Annan