President Mahama wants Ghana’s cocoa export destinations diversified
The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) was on Wednesday charged to diversify Ghana’s cocoa export destinations as an avenue to tackle the over-concentration of the commodity on the European market.
President John Dramani Mahama, who made the call, urged the Board to explore other emerging markets as remedial measures to keep cocoa farmers in business in the face of the incessant fall of the international market price of the commodity.
He was speaking at the National Cocoa Stakeholders’ Forum 2013, which aims at fashioning out long-term solutions to the myriad of challenges confronting the cocoa sector including the production, marketing and financing of its activities.
President Mahama expressed worry about the fate of the commodity in the wake of the continued dwindling of world market prices even though Government had kept its policy of paying 78.42 per cent of the net FOB price in the 2012 and 2013 crop year.
He called on stakeholders to tackle the issue of illegal mining, which had the potential to erode the gains made in the cocoa sector.
President Mahama pledged Government’s commitment to give continued support to the cocoa sector, adding that it would not relegate to the background the valuable contributions of the sector because of the commercial production of oil and gas.
He urged the participants to brainstorm to arrive at cogent ideas and considerations, which would guide the forward-match towards making cocoa farming attractive to the youth.
President Mahama underscored the value of quality assurance of the commodity and called for value addition to processed cocoa to help the nation attain its enviable top position as high-quality cocoa producing country.
He announced Government’s plan to make the Cocoa Forum affair an annual event.
“This is due to the importance Government places on cocoa for its role in the socio-economic lives of Ghanaians.”
Government increased the producer price by 108 per cent from the GHȼ1,632 in 2008/2009 to GHȼ3,200 in 2010/2011 and for 2012 and 2013 increased it to GHȼ3,392 per tonne.
Mr Seth Tekper, Minister of Finance, said COCOBOD injected $1.5 billion into the economy for the 2012 and 2013 cocoa season, adding that the Board was expected to inject more than $1.2 billion.
“This influences the stability of the cedi, inflation rates and eventually interest rates,” he said.
Mr Tekper expressed optimism that players in the energy sector would copy the sterling example of COCOBOD’s ability to raise funds on the international market in order to put their sector on a sound footing.
He said Government’s key policy initiatives had contributed significantly towards the improvement in the cocoa industry.
Some of the initiatives, he said, included payment of remunerative producer prices to farmers, cocoa “Hi-tech” and cocoa diseases and pests control programmes, improved agronomic and husbandry practices, bonus payments to farmers, rehabilitation of degraded farms and provision of social amenities such as roads, solar powered boreholes, hospitals, schools and decent accommodation.
In response to President Mahama’s challenge to the Ghana COCOBOD to diversify its export destinations, Mr Anthony Fofie, Chief Executive of the Board, said it would seek new opportunities in the Far East to expand the scope of external marketing.
He said traditional export destination of Ghana’s cocoa included the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe and Japan.
Mr Fofie gave the assurance that Ghana COCOBOD would continue to partner stakeholders to ensure that the sector remained a critical component of the national economy in spite of the commercial production of oil.
Source: GNA