5 General conclusions

The role of forest plantations in filling the serious wood supply gap is obvious, and it would not be difficult to calculate the area and timing of the plantations needed to meet this gap. The main difficulty is to ensure that these targets can be, and are, met and that the plantations raised are of acceptable standards and yield.

An essential requirement in this regard is to have a medium to long-term (master) plan of plantation development which should identify plantation locations (based on soil and site characteristics and other relevant factors), species, market, etc., and provide detailed analysis of costs and benefits.

Whilst encouraging the development of new forest plantations, existing plantations must be supported to sustain interest in private forest plantation formation. The main constraints to plantation formation in Ghana can be summarized as follows:

• Limited experience with successful commercial forest plantations formation. Hence no proven technical packages;
• No information on available land and site typing even though there is no shortage of gross area;
• Lack of adequate and genetically improved planting material;
• Security of land and tree tenure;
• Fire in the Transition Zone;
• Illegal timber markets and the sale of plantation timber below the market price by the Forestry Department, and
• Timber industry not adapted to small diameter milling.

There is, however, considerable scope for successful commercial plantations in Ghana when the following are compared with those in other tropical countries:

• Favourable conditions for tree growth and quality wood development;
  • Climate
  • Topography, and
  • Soils
• Political stability;
• Reasonable local infrastructure and access to ports;
• Strong domestic markets for wood products and good access to major ECOWAS and European markets;
• Favourable labour market in terms of skills, price and availability;
• Existing processing capacity; and
• Extensive areas of degraded forests within forest reserves suitable for tree planting, and by statute dedicated to permanent forest status.

The Government of Ghana is committed to the facilitation of the formation of commercial plantations in the country for economic, environmental and sociological reasons. It is also the intention of the government that most of the commercial forestry activities should be the province of the private sector. The forest policy (section 3.2.8) indicates that a share of the benefits from forestry must be devoted to securing the resource. The necessary political will exists to boost tree plantation formation. What is required is the necessary incentives and policy reforms to pave the way for an increased investments in commercial tree plantations by both the local and foreign investors.