This adds to the number of projects that have been either rendered redundant or completely collapsed under the Mahama administration.
The collapse is the result of years of neglect by the NDC government and the failure of the Agricultural Development Bank to honour its loan obligations to the company.
The government appears not to care about the project after an amount of US$4.6 million was pumped into the company in 2011 through a loan granted by the ADB.
According to the General Manager of the company, Kojo Osae-Addo, who spoke to the media, sixty percent of the US$4.6 million was used to purchase equipment such as tractors, new rice polishers and spare parts to refurbish existing machinery, and two Nissan pickup vehicles, while the remaining 40 per cent was used to prepare the land, buy seed, other inputs and to pay salaries.
He disclosed that an amount of GH¢3 million was lost in revenue due to the unavailability of combine harvesters because of the theft of parts and the ADB’s refusal to advance US$50,000 for the emergency importation of parts from the USA.
Mr Osae-Addo explained that following the problems encountered by the company in its post-2012 operations, it continued negotiations with ADB for the bank to honour its top-up pledge, which resulted in ADB approaching the German government funded Out-growers Value Chain Fund (OVCF) to provide supplementary funds.
“The terms ADB was insisting on were not favourable to PVL and its small out-growers. In essence ADB was using the OVCF to refinance the existing PVL loan with only an additional GH¢1.67 million in working capital,” he narrated.
ADB finally agreed to provide additional funding over and above the OVCF facility, but on the conditions that an independent business review would be conducted by KPMG, a global network of professional firms providing audit, tax and advisory services.
“As soon as the GH¢1.67 million of the OVCF facility was disbursed in May 2014, ADB informed PVL management that there would be no further disbursements from the agreed supplemental facility because it (ADB) had a pari passu issue with Ghana Commercial Bank, a PVL shareholder,” Mr Osae-Addo said.
This, according to Mr Osae-Addo, put in jeopardy 131 hectares of rice that had been planted then.