Cocoa purchases in Ghana were down 7.3 percent year-on-year in the first two weeks of the country's light crop season, industry regulator Cocobod said on Thursday.

Purchases declared to Cocobod between June 25 and July 8 were 16,623 tonnes, down from 17,933 tonnes.

"It started a bit slower than we expected," Cocobod Chief Executive Tony Fofie said.

Purchases in the week ended July 8 were 6,598 tonnes, down from 10,024 tonnes in the maiden week.

Fofie some buyers may have purchased beans but not reported those deals to Cocobod, in the hope of receiving a higher price as set by the government later in the season.

Cocobod expects purchases in the 11-week light crop season to be around 50,000 tonnes. This phase of the season began after the 33-week main crop closed on June 3.

Cocobod hopes to raise at least $1.2 billion on the international financial market at a meeting in Accra in September, Fofie said, an annual loan to pay for the coming season's purchases which are seen provisionally at 650,000 tonnes.

"We are looking at $1.2 billion but we are ready to take a little more if we have it," he said of the annual loan syndication which has consistently been oversubscribed in the past.

Cumulative purchases declared at the end of the main crop were 587,166 tonnes, compared with the previous season's crop size of 634,256 tonnes, according to figures released by Ghana's central bank last Friday

Cocobod had projected full-season purchases of 700,000 tonnes but it later cut that to 650,000 tonnes due to what it said were high levels of smuggling to neighbouring Ivory Coast and Togo.

As an incentive to farmers, Cocobod this week released 25.5 million cedis to be paid to farmers this month as a second tranche of bonuses on this year's main crop, Fofie said.

The bonuses will be paid through 25 licensed buying companies which buy cocoa on behalf of Cocobod.

Ghana, world no. 2 cocoa producer after Ivory Coast, is hoping to raise production to 1 million tonnes by 2012 by increasing use of fertilisers, enhancing farm husbandry and disease control, and by paying farmers incentives to grow cocoa.