The speakers explained the sector should be formalised through the registration of all the players in the forestry sector value chain as well as the collation of data on all the activities of the players in the value chain.

According to them, the lack of formalisation of the sector makes it difficult to estimate the true contri­bution of the sector to the econom­ic development of the country.

Associate Professor at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources of University of Georgia, Yanshu Li, Ms Natalia Formenton Cardoso, the Food and Agriculture Organisation Economic Specialist of the Food and Agri­culture Organisation (FAO) made the call in Accra yesterday at the end of the two-day National Policy Dialogue (NPD) on Contribu­tions and Sectoral Linkages of the Forest Sector to the economy of Ghana, said the forestry sector was crucial to the country’s economic development and it’s economic impact should be truly measured to inform policies for the sector.

The programme organised by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in collaboration with the Forestry Commission (FC) and the FAO was on the theme “Promoting sustainable forest-based industries in Ghana.”

The two-day NPD was to discuss the final report on “Econom­ic contribution and sectoral linkages of the forest sector to the national economy of Ghana,” and collate additional data to drive policy to enhance the growth of the sector.

The study conducted by Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Re­sources of University of Georgia in 2022 in collaboration with the FAO, GSS and the FC was to estimate the contribution of the forestry sector to the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Prof. Li in a presentation on the report said the forest sector contrib­uted to the Gha­naian econ­omy and had direct, indirect and induced effect on the economy.

She said Ghana had 7.99 mil­lion hectares of forest, accounting for 35 per cent of the total land area, indicating that 99 per cent of the country’s forest was naturally regenerated.

Prof. Li said most of the for­est-related activities were informal and thus made it difficult to capture the activities of the sector for na­tional accounting.

Ms Cardoso for her part called for value addition to forestry and wood products to drive more value from the sector.

She stressed the need for improved data collection on the for­estry sector to inform public policy on the sector.

Ms Cardoso also emphasised the need for the linkages of the forestry sector to agriculture to be strength­ened to derive more benefits from the sector.

The Head of Agriculture and Environmental Statistics and Co­ordinator of the NPD, Dr Bernice Serwaa Ofosu-Baadu, said the NPD was to fill the gaps in the report.

She said the programme was to collate additional data and input to enrich the report.

Dr Ofosu-Baadu said the pro­gramme would help the GSS to put structures in place to collate data from the informal sector of the forestry sector to help compute the real Gross Domestic Product for the sector

 BY KINGSLEY ASARE