Halt Declining Trend In Cocoa Industry - MPs

The Minority group in Parliament says the country lost about 132 million dollars through the smuggling of over 60,000 tons of cocoa during the last crop season. This negative development came about as a result of government's delay in adequately and timely adjusting cocoa prices.

According to a press statement issued by the Minority group on Tuesday, the average price for cocoa over the last six months consistently remained above 2,200 dollars, or the equivalent of 18 million cedis per ton. Therefore, the recent increase in the producer price of cocoa by the government to 8.5 million cedis per ton is inadequate, and less than 50 per cent of the world market price.

The Minority group further argued that it will not be in the interest of farmers to spend another 242 billion cedis of their resources on cocoa disease control because a similar exercise, in which 260 billion cedis of farmers money was spent, resulted in an upsurge in the incidence of the black pod disease in the country. The Minority group therefore called on the NPP government to take urgent steps to halt the declining trend the cocoa industry has been experiencing since the Kufour government came to power.