The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has paid a total of GH¢1.09 billion to cocoa farmers.
The payment was effected to Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) in two tranches between last Wednesday and yesterday.
The amount is in respect of the 50,000 tonnes of cocoa which have been committed for the 2024/2025 crop season.
COCOBOD has sold over 530,000 tonnes of the current crop; however, approximately 50,000 tonnes remain unsold, and some delivered beans are yet to be paid for.
The acting Head of Public Affairs of COCOBOD, Jerome K. Sam, explained to the Daily Graphic that while GH¢237 million was paid to the LBCs last Wednesday, GH¢854 million went through yesterday.
The payments are for committed beans for which the buyers had been remitting funds to pay for under the new buyer-financing model.
He confirmed that the board would be making further payments in the coming days.
Mr Sam explained that about 70,000 tonnes of cocoa would be purchased going forward for the rest of the period, at the readjusted farmgate prices.
Engagements
He confirmed that since the readjustment of the farmgate price, COCOBOD has been engaging the leadership of the cocoa farmers, but will be going to the regions and districts in the coming days to get the farmers to appreciate and understand the issues impacting the crop.
“We want our farmers to understand the dynamics and appreciate the happenings in the industry so that they can appreciate the causes of the price reduction,” Mr Sam said.
At a press conference in parliament yesterday, the Chairman of the Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo, described COCOBOD’s indebtedness in the last three decades as unprecedented. He said those domestic and international shocks jointly necessitated structural reforms in cocoa.
At the start of the 2025 to 2026 cocoa season, Mr Adongo said, COCOBOD had forward sold approximately 530,000 tonnes, representing about 82 per cent of the projected 650,000 tonnes of cocoa at an achieved average Free on Board (FOB) price near $7,200 per tonne.
“Only 18 to 20 per cent of the projected sales remained unexposed to the stock sales that we were trying to manage with the forward sales,” he said.
Background
Cocoa farmers and value chain actors have been demanding payment of arrears and the lifting of beans from the farms, which prompted an extraordinary Cabinet meeting last Wednesday.
While Cabinet recommended payment to the farmers with immediate effect, it also took some policy decisions that would reform the sector for good.
The Producer Price Review Committee (PPRC) last week announced new prices for cocoa at the farmgate for the rest of the 2025/2026 crop season, pegging a tonne of the beans at GH¢41,392 and a bag of 64 kilogrammes at GH¢2,587.
Although the new price is a reduction from the GH¢58,000 per tonne and GH¢3,625 per bag announced on October 2, last year, the new price amounts to 90 per cent of the FOB export price, while the previous prices were about 70 per cent of the FOB price.
The PPRC arrived at the new prices after it met last Thursday to assess the challenges facing the sector and review the producer price for the remainder of the 2025-2026 crop year, as is usually the case.
The PPRC recommended that the farmer be paid 90 per cent of the achieved gross free on board (FOB) price of $4,200 per tonne to mitigate the adverse impact on the farmer as a result of the fall in the world market price.
The world market price of cocoa has dropped significantly from an average of $7,200 per tonne to $4,100 per tonne, making Ghana’s cocoa beans uncompetitive and creating liquidity challenges.
When the producer price was being set in August last year, the gross FOB price was $7,200 per tonne based on an exchange rate of GH¢10.25 to the US dollar.
