PBC Lambasts Cocoa Board

The Produce Buying Company (PBC) has accused the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) of deliberately disrupting its operations through undue delays at the Tema and Takoradi ports.

“When we move cocoa to the port, COCOBOD should arrange and offload it from our vehicles and pay us. We should be paid within a maximum of a week after delivery of cocoa to the port but you won’t believe that in the past weeks, it has taken some of our vehicles over five weeks to be offloaded,” Kojo Atta Krah, Managing Director of PBC recently disclosed in Accra.

“At a certain time, PBC had about a 1,000 trucks at the port. The money which we took as loans for our operation, was locked for weeks and we have been complaining all the time to COCOBOD to ensure that this problem is solved but it persists every year.”

According to Mr Atta Krah, the situation posed the biggest challenge to his outfit in addition to other issues.

He said every year government, through COCOBOD, sources for loans offshore for cocoa purchases but “due to challenges in the industry, we do not get the full complement of these resources.”

Despite the foregoing, the company was able to pay a total amount of GH¢7.565 million as corporate tax to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) in 2011.

The company also paid GH¢2 million as dividend to government as a shareholder, bringing its total contributions to the national treasury in the year to almost GH¢10 million.

PBC recorded a gross profit of GH¢134.803 million in 2011 as against the previous year’s figure of GH¢76.229 million despite an increase in cocoa operations by 109.5 percent for the year under review from GH¢553.059 million to GH¢1.159 billion as a result of an increase in producer price.