The Director of Special Services at Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Jake Kudjo Samahar, has revealed that Ghana has lost about 7,128.13 tonnes of cocoa due to smuggling between 2020 and 2025 crop years in the Volta and Oti regions.
He made this revelation during a working visit by COCOBOD board members to interact with stakeholders in the cocoa sector at the Oti and Volta regions.
He stressed that cocoa production has reduced in these regions over the period.
“The tonnage recorded for 2020/21 crop year was 7,215.19, which reduced to 5,656.25 in 2021/22, further downward to 874.31 in the 2022/23 crop year, while 2023/24 recorded 468.75 tonnes with 2024/25 crop year recording 87.06 tonnes,” he pointed out.
He stated that Ghana has lost about US$1.1 billion from 2022 to 2025 due to cocoa smuggling to neighbouring countries such as Togo and Côte d’Ivoire.
“We are losing a lot of revenue because if you look at within three years from 2022-2025, Ghana has lost almost $1.1 billion through cocoa smuggling into neighbouring Togo and Côte d’Ivoire,” he said.
He explained that security personnel in both regions can be linked to the growing smuggling trade, a development COCOBOD says is worsening losses and weakening border enforcement.
Mr. Samahar emphasised that the smuggling occurs through both local movements within border communities and transit routes into neighbouring countries, mostly facilitated by compromised security checkpoints.
“The uniqueness of the smuggling in the Volta Region and Oti is that we have two categories of smuggling. The first is the local smuggling, where cocoa beans are moved from our farms in the Volta Region or Oti Region into Togo. And then we have the transit ones that move from other regions through the corridors of the eastern corridor down to or into Togo,” he said.
“This means that the security services are not manning their checkpoints. Some of them have compromised themselves very much,” he added.
By Florence Asamoah Adom