Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) says it will maintain the producer price of cocoa despite suggestions by the IMF to review it downwards.
The IMF wants COCOBOD to review the producer price of cocoa downwards to reflect changes in international cocoa prices.
According to the IMF, the downward adjustment will help COCOBOD deal with its current funding gap of GHS1 billion.
In its seventh and eighth review documents under the recently concluded External Credit Facility (ECF) Programme, the IMF said the gap has been due to government’s inability to reduce the producer prices paid to cocoa farmers at a time global prices of the crop have been falling.
However, Manager at the office of the CEO of COCOBOD, Fiifi Boafo, told state-run GBC that the prices will be maintained to discourage farmers from giving out their lands for other activities.
Before the commencement of a cocoa season, COCOBOD normally announces the producer price that it will pay to farmers for their beans in the crop season.
That price was last increased by 11.76 per cent in October 2016 to cover the 2016/2017 season. Since then, it has remained unchanged at GH¢7,600 per tonne, translating into GH¢475 per bag of 64 kilogrammes (kg) gross weight.
Within the same period, however, the price of cocoa on the international market suffered a tumultuous fall, dropping from an average of US$2,500 per tonne in November 2016 before ending that year at US$2,287 per tonne, according to the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO).
The price of cocoa remained bearish throughout 2017, rising only in October before falling again to end December at US$1,917.68 per tonne, according to the world cocoa body.
In 2018, ICCO’s data showed that prices strengthened consistently to peak at US$2,659.9 per tonne in May before fluctuating throughout the remaining part of the year.
The Bloomberg Terminal, which also tracks global prices of the crop, quoted it at US$2,245 per tonne on the morning of April 25.E
Thus, maintaining the price at GH¢7,600 per tonne at a time the global cocoa price was crashing means that COCOBOD has been accumulating losses, a development the IMF now estimates at GH¢1 billion.
