GHANA
Cocobod raises $300 million from foreign lenders.
The Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod), the regulatory body for the cocoa sector in Ghana, signed a three-year US$300 million loan at the end of March with several international lenders to refinance previous commitments obtained by the Central Bank. The financing facility was subscribed by a banking consortium including the French Natixis, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, the Japanese MUFG Bank and the Dutch Rabobank. According to Joseph Boahen Aidoo, Managing Director of Cocobod, the loan obtained will be used primarily « to implement sustainability programmes in all cocoa-producing regions in order to improve the social and environmental sustainability of cocoa cultivation… ». This fundraising is in addition to the one in September 2018, when Cocobod obtained another US$1.3 billion international financing facility to purchase cocoa beans from farmers for the agricultural season. With a production of 970,000 tonnes for the 2017-2018 season, Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer after Côte d’Ivoire.