Cocoa: Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana around the table to reach an agreement with international traders
Announced since mid-June, the technical meeting between national authorities and private operators in the sector, which must settle the details of the implementation of a floor price of 2600 dollars/tonne, opened on Wednesday 3 July 2019 in Abidjan.
For this summit meeting, the Ivorian and Ghanaian gendarmes in the cocoa sector, the Coffee-Cocoa Council (CCC) and the Cocobod (Ghana Cocoa Board), will have as their main international and multinational negotiating partners (Cargill, Cémoi, Barry Callebaut, Mars Cocoa, Sucden…) and will together set to music the modalities for applying the floor price required by Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana (US$2,600 per tonne of cocoa).
Yves Brahima Koné, the CCC’s Executive Director, while insisting that the challenge is « to provide answers to farmers’ poverty », nevertheless wants to be balanced when he says that « we want a consensus ». To influence the negotiations, the two leaders of brown gold (65% of world supplies) have already decided to suspend « until further notice » their bean sales for the 2020-2021 season, which will start in a little over a year. It remains to be seen whether, at the end of this meeting, this attempt by the two neighbouring countries to set their own rules will bear fruit. In 1988,
Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny also tried to impose his conditions on the international market by temporarily freezing bean exports. Without success. Today, however, it is the two world leaders in the sector who are united. And if successful, the financial repercussions for farmers could be significant: with a price per kilo equivalent to about CFAF 1,000 - compared to 750 today - the associated income would theoretically increase by more than 30%.