Ghana reaps first results of new cocoa price agreement
Following the agreement to establish a subsistence income differential of $400 per tonne, Ghana confirmed that it had sold nearly 200,000 tonnes of cocoa for the 2020/21 season.
After several months of wrestling with the world’s major cocoa traders and the agreement reached at the end of October to establish a subsistence income differential (SIR) of $400 per tonne, the Ivorian-Ghanaian authorities continue to reap the benefits of their pugnacity. Asked by Reuters on Tuesday 12 November, on the sidelines of an investment conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, CEO of Cocobod, the Ghanaian cocoa sector regulator, said the country had already sold nearly 200,000 tonnes of cocoa in the 2020/21 season with a price including this new scheme for farmers. A figure that, according to the head of the Cocobod, should be increased to 650,000 tonnes next season, or a little more than two-thirds of the country’s current annual production (900,000 tonnes). « So far, everything is working as planned, » said Joseph Boahen Aidoo, who also recalled that « the DRS is here to stay. A victory that echoes the first good results recorded in Côte d’Ivoire: following the agreement reached at the end of October with the major operators in the cocoa sector at the World Cocoa Foundation meetings in Berlin, Singapore’s Olam made a commitment to the Ivorian Coffee-Cocoa Council (CCC) to buy 100,000 tonnes of cocoa from the 2020-2021 harvest integrating the DRS.
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