Adnan Adams Mohammed
Ghanaian cocoa farmers would now receive GHC49,600 ($3,062) per metric ton of cocoa beans with immediate effect for the rest of 2024/25 season.
This is second time of increasing cocoa price in the same season with the the initial increase pegging the price at GHC48,000 as announced on September 1, 2024.
The increase as announced by President Nana Akufo-Addo, last week at the Farmer’s Day celebration is to help boost farmers’ incomes and also curtail smuggling.
A Reuters’s report indicates that, rumors of a possible price hike led to farmers’ hoarding beans in October, potentially squeezing global supplies.
The authorities have been seeking to increase farmers’ incomes and deter smuggling, which led to Ghana losing more than a third of its cocoa output for 2023/24, according to Cocobod officials.
This compounded sectoral woes that brought Ghana’s production to a more than two-decade low, helping send global cocoa prices to record highs.
Mr Akufo-Addo also said he had directed Cocobod to provide scholarships to cocoa farmers’ children in tertiary education.
However, Mr Bright Simons, a vice president at Accra-based think tank IMANI Africa, said the motivation for the policies “appears to be strictly about votes in the impending elections”, noting that the price hike was significantly below the cumulative effects of inflation and currency depreciation, muting the potential impact.
Ghana, one of Africa’s most stable democracies, heads to the polls on Dec. 7 to elect a replacement for Akufo-Addo, who first came to office in 2017. Vice President Muhamudu Bawumia of the ruling New Patriotic Party, and former president John Mahama of the main opposition National Democratic Congress party, are the main contenders.
Polls from Accra-based research group Global InfoAnalytics tip Mahama to win as Ghana’s worst economic crisis in a generation weighs against the ruling party. Dr Bawumia, an economist and former central banker, is seen as the face of the government’s economic policies.
Ghana’s cocoa production is second only to neighbouring Ivory Coast.
