Ghana to maintain cocoa production target despite oversupply on world market

The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) says it will continue to put in place measures to boost the production level of Cocoa even though there’s a risk of contributing to the oversupply of the commodity on the world market.

According to the CEO of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, other countries like Ecuador, Ivory Coast and Nigeria will continue to increase their production levels, hence the need for Ghana to do same in order not to be left behind.

COCOBOD set for itself a target of producing 850,000 metric tons of cocoa in the 2017/2018 crop season which ended in September.

The company has meanwhile secured a $1.3 billion dollar syndicated loan facility for cocoa purchases and related activities for the 2018/19 Cocoa Season, against a production target of 900,000 metric tonnes of cocoa the 2019 season.

This increase in target for next year is in line with COCOBOD’s plan of aggressively pursuing productivity enhancement programmes to help Ghana reach the one million metric tonne mark in the next few years.

The International Cocoa Organization however has drawn the attention of stakeholders to the crisis of overproduction of cocoa on the world market which could see farmers in countries like Ghana and Ivory Coast left with huge cocoa stocks.

However, during an interaction with some National Best Cocoa Farmers who paid a courtesy call on the CEO of COCOBOD Joseph Aidoo, he said Ghana must focus on improving farmer productivity to give farmers the option of selling more bags.