Joseph Boahen Aidoo – CEO of COCOBOD
Purchases of the 2020/2021 main crop cocoa season commence today, Friday, October 2, 2020, a press statement issued by the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) yesterday in Accra has said.
It said the producer price to be paid at all buying centres is GH¢316.80 per load of 30 kilogrammes for Grade 1 & 2 cocoa beans naked ex-scale, or GH¢660 per bag of 64 kilogrammes gross, while a tonne of 16 bags is GH¢10,560.00.
COCOBOD recently signed a $1.3 billion syndicated loan agreement with some 24 local and international banks to purchase cocoa beans for the 2020/21 season.
The virtual signing was the first time COCOBOD has had to sign the agreement with the international banks and four local ones.
The foreign banks include Amro Bank, Bank of China Limited in London, Standard Chartered Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Ghana International Bank, Cooperative Rabobank, UA and Societe Generale. The local ones include Ecobank Ghana Limited, Societe Generale Ghana Limited, Absa Ghana Limited and Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited.
It would be recalled that in August this year, Parliament approved the syndicated loan with an interest rate of 1.75 per cent.
The Chief Executive of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, noted that the facility would be used to purchase at least 900,000 tonnes of cocoa from farmers, adding this would be paid back in seven months’ time.
“We have also returned this trust by ensuring that we never defaulted in repaying the loans since the 1992/1993 crop season when the first one was signed. We have on several occasions repaid the loan ahead of schedule. The 2019/2020 syndicated loan, for instance, was repaid two months ahead of schedule,” he said.
To ensure improved incomes and better livelihoods for farmers, Mr. Boahen Aidoo disclosed that Ghana and Ivory Coast introduced the Living Income Differential pricing mechanism which had resulted in the addition of a $400 to the price of every tonne of cocoa sold by the two countries.
President Akufo-Addo announced a 28 per cent increase in farm-gate cocoa prices for the 2020/2021 crop season, which started on October 1, 2021.
For every bag of 64 kilogramme premium quality cocoa sold by any Ghanaian farmer, they would be paid GH¢660.
BY Samuel Boadi